The Equity Leadership Column: What Holds a System Up?
By October, the plans made at the beginning of the school year have met reality. Priorities are being tested, challenges are emerging, and leaders are making decisions about what to hold onto, what to adjust, and where to focus next.
This is often when the strength of a system begins to show. When the work gets difficult, what keeps everyone moving in the same direction?
Where Equity Lives argues that the answer isn’t one extraordinary leader. Strong individual leaders matter, but even the most talented superintendent, principal, or board member cannot independently build a system capable of getting every student to X. What matters is the structure those leaders create together.
Chapter 5 calls that structure the Equity Leadership Column, a metaphor meant to evoke the design and construction of something substantial enough to carry weight. At its center is a powerful idea: the likelihood of historically lower-achieving students reaching the highest academic levels is directly connected to the degree of alignment among a highly knowledgeable and cohesive group of key leaders.
A strong system isn’t held up by one person. It’s held up by alignment.
Building a Strong Base
At the base of the Equity Leadership Column is superintendent stability. Across the successful systems studied in Where Equity Lives, long-term, stable superintendent leadership was a common denominator.
That stability matters because getting students to X is long-term work. Systems need enough time to develop expertise, implement deeply, learn from evidence, and stay focused on the destination. Constant changes in leadership can bring constant changes in direction, making it difficult for any approach to take root.
But superintendent stability alone isn’t enough. The base of the column also requires Board of Education reinforcement.
The superintendent and board must share the priority of getting students to X. They need agreement about the achievement floor and the conditions necessary for every student to reach grade level or above. That doesn’t mean the board stops listening, questioning, or engaging with its community. Those responsibilities remain essential. But alongside them is another responsibility: reinforcing the course the board and superintendent have agreed upon so meaningful student acceleration has the opportunity to take hold.
The stronger the alignment between the board and superintendent, the stronger the base. The stronger the base, the stronger the column. And the stronger the column, the greater its ability to remain standing when the work becomes difficult.
A Few People in the Right Places
Interestingly, an Equity Leadership Column doesn’t need to be large. In fact, Chapter 5 argues that small Equity Leadership Columns are best.
Think of it as a handful of equity champions: leaders who deeply believe in a true, right, and just education for every student and who hold the right positions to influence the design and direction of the system.
The goal isn’t to have the largest committee or another leadership initiative. It’s to have the right people, with the right expertise, aligned around the same destination.
This connects directly to the Christmas Tree Effect we explored in Chapter 4. If a system is going to resist constantly adding new solutions and instead select very few high-leverage efforts, implement them well, and stay the course, someone has to hold that course steady.
That’s the work of the Equity Leadership Column.
Alignment Is an Equity Strategy
We often talk about leadership in terms of individual qualities: courage, knowledge, vision, communication, or experience. Chapter 5 asks us to look beyond the individual and examine the alignment among leaders.
If X marks the spot, do the people with the greatest influence over the system agree on where X is? Do they agree on the achievement floor for students? Do they share an understanding of what it will take to get there? And when the work becomes difficult, will they reinforce the agreed-upon direction or allow the system to drift toward something new?
Because ultimately, students don’t experience our individual intentions. They experience the system those intentions create together.
As you move deeper into the school year, consider the structure holding your own work up. Is there a small, knowledgeable group of leaders aligned around a shared destination for students? Is the foundation strong enough to withstand competing priorities, difficult conversations, and pressure to change course?
A strong Equity Leadership Column ensures that the adults with the greatest ability to shape the system are standing on the same foundation and building toward the same destination.