School Leader Sensemaking in Education Policy Implementation

Introduction: Public education policy goals in the United States regularly include value-laden but vaguely defined goals, like excellence, equity or diversity. Qualitative research focusing on principals’ sensemaking and sensegiving around policy goals reveals how their values as education professionals intersect with and respond to demands and pressures of school choice policies.

Goals and Methods: This study examines how school leaders reconcile professional visions of excellent and equitable education with racialized reputations and market pressures embedded in choice school assignment policies (SAPs).  Scholarship is rich on the role of parents and districts in shaping SAP’s. Critical scholarship has increased professional knowledge. This comparative case study of 16 principals in four districts under different SAPs allowed me to explore the under-researched sensemaking of principals in racially diverse schools as well as the interplay of that sensemaking with larger structural forces of race and racialized school reputation. I conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews and observed principals’ presentations to prospective parents. The comparative case study is perfect for situations where multiple variables that affect the particular entity or phenomenon cannot be separated from the context.

Results: The study reveals that market forces and racialized perceptions of school quality push principals toward practices like tracking and test prep, often in contradiction with their educational ideals. However, in districts where SAPs explicitly seek to integrate schools and distribute students equitably, principals felt empowered to align practices with professional values, fostering more inclusive, equitable learning environments.

Conclusions: The findings of my research indicate that, in contrast to measuring school quality in terms of racialized reputations, principals’ professional visions of good schools fosters a mutually reinforcing and inseparable connection of excellence, equity, and diversity. SAPs have the potential power to disrupt the stranglehold that racialized school reputations have on principals’ ability to pursue their vision of a good school.