Lip Service to Action Planning: Why Education Leaders Should Conduct Equity Audits

The aftermath of the global pandemic has fostered a renewed commitment to issues of equity and justice that impact all areas of education. While recent political rhetoric challenges school leaders to defend culturally relevant practices that engage diverse learners, the need to explore new paradigmatic approaches to closing equity gaps has heightened.

The closure of schools, the pivot to virtual learning, the learning loss of students, and an absence of social emotional learning strategies have all contributed to the exacerbation of inequities among minoritized student populations (Miller & Liu, 2021; Perry et al., 2021; Authors, 2022). This has prompted school leaders committed to inclusive learning spaces to incorporate transformative leadership strategies to ameliorate the various gaps that continue to plague public education (Furman, 2015; Shields, 2010).

Leadership preparation programs since the start of the pandemic have been pivotal in helping school leaders and school districts employ transformative leadership approaches to address the various equity challenges confronting diverse learners as well as the staff