Chapter 25 - Synergies Between School Leaders

25.
Synergies between school leaders and

communities in challenging urban schools:
a review of organizational dynamics and the
urban schools’ continuum
Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz
INTRODUCTION
The following analysis presents a scholarly approach from two research lines: school
leadership and academic achievement in challenging urban settings. The element that links
these two lines is developing synergies between school leaders and urban communities. By
school leaders we refer to the personnel in positions of leadership in schools in relation to
their teaching staff, their local authorities and communities. Formally, these charges apply to
headteachers but may also include deputy or assistant headteachers (Hernández-Fernández,
2020). We prefer the use of “school leader” since it allows a broader definition of the personnel
developing a leadership role in schools. This leadership role may refer to a transitional,
temporary, or emergent status; therefore, the use of “school leader” allows more flexibility and
inclusivity while also reflecting the processes of distributed and informal leadership among
the teaching staff.
One of the main causalities that foster said synergy lies in the intersection of the priorities
each of them seeks to attain: improving school achievement and addressing a stressful urban
environment. We argue that a culturally responsive school policy can foster this synergy.
Based on this premise, we followed an analytic-synthetic method for the study of leadership,
focusing on the school’s organizational dynamics. We address the organizational dynamic
from a meso-level approach, emphasizing the school leaders’ role, relying on Complexity
Leadership’s tools to develop innovations and informal leadership to face change. As
a methodological approach, a multilevel analysis highlights the interactions occurring between
the different levels and elements integrating an organization while allowing its understanding
as a whole (Majowska and Austen, 2019). This organizational interaction considers the micro,
meso, and macro scales. While each dimension retains its specificity, the meso scale stands for
its linkage between the micro and macro levels. The meso scale shifts between the school’s
micro politics and the macro politics of the surrounding context. The school leader holds
a strategic position to link these two scales; therefore, we highlight the meso-level analytical
approach to explore their role in challenging urban schools, which picture a particular micro
and macro politics according to their context. Once we identify a consistent classification of
the challenging urban schools in the literature, which reflect their nuances and diversity, we
consider the possibility of establishing a continuum of these school environments. Therefore,
we propose a series of educational change frames as rationales for each variant of challenging
urban schools. These variants may appear in a mixed form, which demands the principal’s
role as a focal leader to tackle the challenges posed by each frame. By exploring this process,
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458 Research handbook on the sociology of organizations
we present a series of cases recovered from the literature to illustrate the feasibility of both
responsive school policies and Complexity Leadership’s tools to develop synergies to achieve
common goals in challenging urban schools.
The importance of focusing on the school leaders’ role in challenging urban schools
places us in the study of inequalities in school achievement according to the context. There
is a consensus in the literature on this field that, in developing countries, rural schools are
at a disadvantage compared to urban schools in terms of academic achievement (Mungai,
2012; Nworgu and Nworgu, 2013; Zhang et al., 2015; Opoku-Assare and Siaw, 2015; Ramos
et al., 2016). Among the main arguments that support this consensus are two variables:
the difficulties of access and permanence suffered by students from rural versus urban
environments (Juárez and Rodríguez, 2016) and greater poverty in rural settings (Basque and
Bouchamma, 2013). However, as the reports of the Regional Comparative Studies of the Latin
American Laboratory for the Evaluation of Education of UNESCO (2010, 2015) point out,
rurality is not necessarily a decisive factor of disadvantage:
When considering the students’ socioeconomic level, an essential part of the negative association
between rural schools and learning achievements disappears and even becomes positive in some cases
[…] For example, in third grade, in Argentina, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic, rural schools
have higher levels of achievement in reading and mathematics, unlike Guatemala, where rural schools
are disadvantaged compared to public urban schools, even after taking into account socioeconomic
status. (UNESCO, 2015, p. 134)
While the rural–urban gap still claims an uneven relationship in academic achievement
regarding the context, urbanicity itself shows a heterogeneous composition. In developed
countries, the suburban environment is no longer a homogeneous setting and offers some
of the challenges found in inner-city contexts (Sulak, 2016). The family and environmental
stressors affecting academic performance vary across urban, suburban, and rural contexts,
hitting them to different degrees (Miller et al., 2019). In developing countries, the rapid
growth trend that poverty shows in urban areas while decreasing in absolute terms in rural
ones, mainly due to the expulsion of rural population to urban centers, affects school climate.
Consequently, the population living in poverty is becoming a majority in urban centers in
developing countries due to natural growth and immigration (Martine et al., 2008). Immigrants
from rural areas face sharper dimensions of discrimination and settle in disadvantaged places
(Teschner, 2016). This panorama configures the complexity of urban school environments that
are characterized by the following features: (1) a high concentration of low-income students;
(2) a series of psychological and material factors that hinder optimal development, such as
malnutrition, exposure to crime, and dysfunctional families; (3) diversity: the confluence
of diverse ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic factors in school enrollment; (4) a population
density marked by a lack of access to a reasonable proximity condition, due to transportation
issues (Portin et al., 2009).
In terms of human capital, the characterization of challenging urban schools by Archambault
and Garon (2013) is illustrative. They include high unemployment rates, numerous single-parent
families, a high concentration of immigrant families, bilingual communities, and a growing
proportion of privately supported schools. Additionally, students in this setting experience an
educational gap concerning the expected learning and skills for their age and grade. These
learning gaps ultimately lead to low employability and a lower probability of increasing
income. Due to this societal configuration, we are interested in highlighting the contribution of

Synergies between school leaders and communities in urban schools 459
school leaders in promoting these subjects’ agency, who in the literature on the school context
appear merely as part of the environment or subordinated to pre-established participation
mechanisms.
SCHOOL LEADERS IN CHALLENGING SETTINGS: THE

EMERGENCE OF URBAN COMMUNITIES’ AGENCY
In this research, we focus on school leaders as critical mediating agents in promoting the
empowerment of the urban communities through synergies to achieve related goals: improving
school achievement and dealing with stressful urban environments. The effective-schools
approach is a crucial contribution we recover from the research on academic achievement
challenges in urban-marginal schools (Larkin, 1975; Edmonds, 1979; Heck and Hallinger,
2010). This trend highlights the obligation of the school to increase academic achievement
without distinction of origin. In this sense, the effective-schools approach emphasizes that
socioeconomic factors should not determine academic gains since the school has a series of
factors under its control that may affect achievement, regardless of context. The main elements
that, according to this approach, characterize an effective school are: strong administrative
leadership; teaching for all, but in particular for the neediest students; a firm but not oppressive
environment of achievement expectations; and constant monitoring of student progress
(Edmonds, 1979).
The research framed in the efficient-schools trend has elaborated complex quantitative
methodologies to identify the correlation between school environment factors and academic
achievement (Blanco, 2009; Hallinger and Liu, 2016; Cooper et al., 2016). This approach
appeared on the threshold between the Contingency and the New Leadership stages. One
of the main changes reflecting this transition was the accent on the leader as a manager of
the shared meanings that unite an organization’s members beyond the influence that leaders
exercise over their followers. This shift enabled a bilateral relationship between leader
and followers, rather than a unilateral one. The scales’ methodology, developed during the
Contingency leadership stage to measure either a relationship or task-oriented leadership,
was recovered under a renewed aim to determine performance at the individual level towards
effective or ineffective leadership. Among the founding authors of the New Leadership
approach to assessing effectiveness are Burns (1978) and Bass (1985). Burns stated that the
leader’s effectiveness varied according to a transactional style or a transformational one. The
difference lies in the link established between leader and followers. The transactional model’s
practical purposes limit the leader’s effectiveness compared to the more intense and organic
connection of the transformational one. Depending on the style, the leader could appear
either as a manager or a leader. However, the field consensus defined that leadership aimed at
either of these styles is not sufficient for optimal organizational performance; hence, linking
management with leadership gained strength (Parry and Briman, 2006).
Giles et al. (2005) provide an accurate account of how the post-transformational leadership
shift fitted in school settings. While Burns (1978) emphasized the leap from an exchange of
satisfiers to the building of mutual trust, Avolio and Bass (1988) highlighted the growth of
commitment between leader and followers to deal with organizational changes. Leithwood
(1994) took up these principles to adapt them to the school environment within the development
of accountability reforms since the principal plays a crucial role in outlining a common goal

for the teaching staff. Leithwood (1994) also stressed the contingent nature of the school
leader’s role in enabling collaborative practices in which the teaching staff members assimilate
a shared goal for constant improvement.
Within this post-transformational leadership paradigm, in Leithwood’s (1994) conception,
the school leader occupies a more decentralized role while leadership and influence
capacities spill over among other teaching staff members. Among the guidelines within the
post-transformational approach, Leithwood and Riehl (2003) identified eight areas in which
school leaders should train their team: (1) build a school vision, (2) set goals for the school,
(3) offer intellectual stimulation, (4) provide individual support, (5) model best practices
and relevant organizational values, (6) demonstrate high-performance expectations, (7)
create a productive school structure, and (8) develop systems to encourage participation in
decision-making.
The incorporation of leadership studies in the school environment occurred during the
shift to the post-transformational or distributed/dispersed leadership approaches, which
transcended the visionary hero leader of the New Leadership trend (Collinson et al., 2018).
We concur with the post-transformational paradigm definition of leadership, which, according
to Parry and Briman (2006), stands as a ubiquitous relationship within organizations not fixed
in a particular position. While principals stand as school leaders, their task is to guide their
members to drive themselves. In that sense, leadership stands as a team’s quality more than
a predetermined agent’s role.
As Parry and Briman (2006) point out, the qualitative approach in leadership studies was
developed after the post-transformational shift and incorporated organizational culture. The
research in this approach delved into the strategies and styles of leadership and management
of school leaders and teaching groups for improvement in urban schools characterized by
chronic low performance, as well as the pressure they face from high stakes assessments and
accountability policies (West and Anscow, 2006; White-Smith, 2012; Warren and Kelsen,
2013; Archambault and Garon, 2013). Both approaches, quantitative and qualitative, enrich
leadership studies, either in determining factors that influence the outcomes or characterizing
the link between leader and followers where leadership stands as a distributed process.
The qualitative approach has produced a particular schools typology. A series of shared
features, according to Alkin (1992), Berry (2004), Giles et al. (2005), Horng (2005), Lambert
(2006), Giles (2006), Portin et al. (2009), Khalifa (2010), and Weathers (2011), are the
following:
● Internalization of low-performance regarding ethnic, socioeconomic, and gender prejudices.

● Focus on learning and a stimulating curriculum is absent.
● Crowded classrooms.
● Obsolete materials.
● Shortage of qualified teachers.
● Lack of cohesion due to mistrust among school actors.
● Power relationships, demotivation, and fatigue in the teaching staff hamper the necessary
involvement to generate change.
● Low involvement with parents.
● Low levels of attendance.
● High levels of enrollment transience.
● Problems of coexistence and discipline.

Table 25.1 Challenging urban schools: category continuum
Categories in literature Educational change frame Public policy instrument

Schools in challenging urban contexts Public expenditure for schooling returns Need-to-Resource Capacity Index
High poverty challenging schools Subsidies
High-need challenging schools
Hard-to-staff urban schools Environment for effective quality National Writing Project
teaching
Underserved minority schools Social justice through capacity building School counselors
Hyperghettoized urban at-risk students
Underperforming schools High stakes assessment and Academic Performance Index (API)
accountability Schools Facing Challenging Circumstances
(SFCC)
Source: Authors’ elaboration.
In Table 25.1, in the left column, we have collected the main concepts that have shaped the
category of challenging urban schools, according to the former authors. We present a series
of educational change frames in the middle column, built ex professo for each concept. They
respond to an analytical purpose: to identify each category’s rationale since each one of them
responds to a specific historical context and political meaning (Carnoy, 1967; New York
State Education Department, 2004; Jacobson et al., 2007). A third column was added for their
respective public policy instrument when identified from the literature.
This category continuum allows us to appreciate the varied focus on the challenging urban
school as a public problem, reflecting the approach angle, particularly from school leadership,
to propose improvement strategies in these schools. These frames configure their related
school category and entail a theory of change appropriate to each one. The first of them,
“Public expenditure for schooling returns,” encompasses three types and refers to the impact
of investment in education according to human capital rationale. The second, “Environment
for effective and quality teaching,” refers to the minimum teaching conditions for educational
agents to perform optimally. The third, “Social justice through capacity building,” addresses
structural inequality from a paradigm of positive liberty, according to the enrollment’s
underserved and hyperghettoized at-risk status (Khalifa, 2010). The fourth, “High stakes
assessment and accountability,” responds to the governance of education systems through
policies with consequences for the actors involved according to their results in standardized
tests and incorporates the measures to which they must respond to improve their status.
However, within each frame’s specificity and category, the overlap between them is also
feasible depending on the possible combinations. For example, a school identified as “low
performing” may at the same time be a “challenging high poverty” school with a “culturally
diverse and historically excluded” enrollment. Thus, along with the performance requirements
of the “High-stakes assessment and accountability” frame to which these actors must respond,
it is possible to find policies either from the “Public expenditure for schooling returns” or the
“Social justice through capacity building” frames. Nevertheless, this does not imply that the
availability of policies derived from these frames is guaranteed, as we will show later.
Based on these characteristics and from a post-transformational leadership approach (Fullan,
2001; Mumford and Van Doorn, 2001; Parry and Briman, 2006), we deliver a more in-depth
analysis of urban schools’ communities within this continuum in terms of their agency. In
the absence of a culturally responsive school policy, the actors representing these urban

communities, in this case, low-income parents, are perceived by the principal and the teaching
staff in terms of a cultural deficit (West and Anscow, 2006; Auerbach, 2010), according to
Bourdieu’s (1984) notion of cultural capital as the sense and qualities valued in any given
society. The absence of an organic link between school leaders and urban communities hinders
the generation of synergies between them, delaying the pursuit of their shared goals (the
improvement of school achievement and the improvement of stressful urban environments).
Therefore, from a culturally responsive school policy, these communities’ cultural capital
is recognized to perform as critical agents for the school’s building and the community’s
enhancement (Auerbach, 2010). One of the main strategies to enable this linkage is integrating
the community’s cultural knowledge funds within the school curriculum. In this strategy,
the urban environment is addressed from an empathetic position rather than rejection
or xenophobia. This empathetic approach requires that school leaders become “warm
demanders” (Johnson, 2007), that is, to maintain high expectations of achievement concerning
their underserved students while being empathetic. The recognition of marginalized sectors’
contexts, knowledge, and culture to raise awareness of the power relations in which their
students dwell leads to questioning the status quo. This proposal starts from the premise of
linking high achievement expectations with a care ethic, particularly in contexts of cultural
diversity crossed by structural inequalities.
INTEGRATING URBAN COMMUNITIES’ FUNDS OF

KNOWLEDGE IN THE CURRICULUM THROUGH
A CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE SCHOOL LEADERSHIP
Because synergy between challenging urban school communities and school leaders is
necessary to achieve their related goals, it is imperative to remove the barriers that impede
such synergy. The cultural capital barrier between the teaching staff and the urban community
represented by parents is often one of the most common obstacles. In minority and
low-income student schools, parents and teachers accuse each other of the inability to close the
achievement gap. While teachers blame parents’ low cultural capital, parents blame teachers’
lack of responsiveness to their children (Atkinson and Juntunen, 1994).
Therefore, it is necessary to generate an environment and a series of culturally responsive
school practices to attract parents marginalized by the dominant school culture. Parents
regarded as unqualified appear troublesome because the school culture has a biased perception
based on income and ethnic identity (Auerbach, 2010). Instead, the transformative leadership
approach deepens the school–parent partnership by addressing the lack of involvement for
discriminatory reasons. A fundamental premise of the effective-schools theory is that all
children must and can learn and that parents are key actors, at the same level, for this purpose.
In this sense, culturally responsive leadership is one of the main strategies to overcome
these barriers. Johnson (2007), and Villegas and Lucas (2002) set the standard for culturally
responsive leadership for academic achievement in high poverty challenging schools: recovery
of the students’ local cultures; empowerment of parents from culturally diverse neighborhoods;
and commitment of school leaders to societal change to improve students’ living conditions.
The enactment of this corpus often clashes with educational policy and district authorities’
demands in schools under review due to low achievement, revealing the centrality that the

High Stakes Assessment and Accountability frame has in school management, particularly in
underperforming schools (see Table 25.1).
In these cases, district authorities’ support can balance a diverse curriculum without
neglecting achievement standards (Johnson, 2007). The School Counselors’ policy framed
in the US No Child Left Behind Elementary and Secondary Education Act (NCLB-ESEA)
(2002–2015)1 and promoted by the American School Counselors Association (Bryan, 2005)
is illustrative in this regard. Their role in establishing school–family–community alliances
removes the obstacles that hinder school achievement, especially in students from minority
and poverty areas. These agents play a supporting role for various schools and principals
as they move at the local and district level. They are also facilitating agents and mediators
in contexts where the approach between the teaching community and the principal with the
parents is incipient. Through proactive leadership, school counselors establish agreements
and encourage stakeholders’ participation in setting a plan to improve school achievement in
low-performing students.
The school–family–community partnerships and the School Counselors’ intervention were
policies embedded in the NCLB-ESEA. The availability of these policy instruments highlights
the impact of the Public Expenditure for Schooling Returns frame within the more hegemonic
High Stakes Assessment and Accountability frame. In this case, leadership practices for
low-performing schools can be made available through professional development policies
and compensatory programs, mainly nutritional support (free/reduced price lunch). One of
the instruments included in the Public Expenditure for Schooling Returns educational change
frame is the Need-to-Resource Capacity Index (see Table 25.1). This index determines which
high-poverty/high need schools are eligible for such compensatory policies (New York State
Education Department, 2004). The Supporting Montreal Schools Program (SMS) in Canada
is an example of a system framed in the Social Justice through Capacity Building frame (see
Table 25.1). This program’s fundamental guidelines include instructional intervention adapted
to promote learning and achievement for all, collaboration with family and partner networks,
and professional development for administrators and school teams (Archambault and Garon,
2013).
In fragile statehood countries (Jean Marie and Sider, 2014; Kamper, 2008) there are policies
derived from the Public Expenditure for Schools Returns frame (see Table 25.1), such as
subsidies for schools with an enrollment made up of poor students. However, the authorities’
negligence in managing these policies demands an additional effort from school leaders
together with their teaching staff and communities. A strategic practice to face this challenge
is the building of a shared identity and a sense of belonging. According to the leadership
literature, generating this shared vision is one of the leader’s primary roles. As stated earlier,
a culturally responsive policy lays the corner-stone for the collaboration between teaching
staff and parents. On this basis, the school’s goals expand beyond academic achievement by
1
The NCLB-ESEA was the policy frame valid through 2002 to 2015 in the United States. It was
highly controversial because of its performance-centered approach and the enforcement of sanctions for
underperforming schools in an increased accountability rationale. The “Every Student Succeeds Act”
(ESSA) replaced it in 2015 and recovered its focus on tracking performance in minority students while
suppressing the rule for teachers to be highly qualified in core subjects, which allowed school districts
to design their own methods for school improvement and restored to states their initiative to apply
evaluations (Nolen and Duignan, 2019).

incorporating self-esteem, awareness of cultural diversity, social skills, and civic engagement
(Jacobson, 2018). Incorporating these practices requires school leaders to become cultural
leaders capable of identifying their members’ codes to generate a sense of belonging and
the common goals already mentioned. This capacity in the school environment strengthens
the teaching staff’s social capital, that is, their social bonds and civic engagement capacity
(Weathers, 2011; Beel and Wallace, 2020).
Weathers (2011) applies Collins’ (2003) Interaction Ritual Chains (IRC) theory to highlight
that the formal and informal actions that leaders promote in their teaching staff contribute
to enhance community sense at school. According to IRC, the emotional energy exchange
results from social interactions: the more positive, the stronger the bond (Boyns and Luery,
2015). Furtherly, reciprocity and accountability mechanisms reinforce this belonging. In turn,
the collegial process of discussion and assimilation of measures and standards appointed in
policies derived from the High Stakes Assessment and Accountability frame reinforces the
clarity of goals and community sense. When principals promote a community sense, they also
become competent cultural leaders who manage to interpret their environment’s organizational
culture to make appropriate decisions and guide their actions accordingly.
SCHOOL LEADERS AND THE TEACHING STAFF:

STRENGTHENING THE BOND
Performance demands under accountability policies place more stress on underperforming

urban school principals. Therefore, constant support is required to prevent the environment’s
adversities from leading teachers to anxiety and resignation. The factors that affect the high
turnover of teaching staff based on their resignation are of two kinds: attraction (pull) or
pressure (push). More attractive offers to work in better districts appear in the pull factors, also
known as migration. While in push situations, stress and frustration from being immersed in
a challenging environment associated with low status and few rewards force teachers to leave
(Ingersoll, 2001; Ingersoll and Smith, 2003).
Turnover issues refer to one of the educational change frames built for this research, the
Environment for Effective Quality Teaching (see Table 25.1). A proposal to address the lack
of retention of teaching staff in challenging urban schools, according to Yonezawa et al.
(2011), is professional resilience. Professional resilience can be acquired through a series of
practices: sociocultural awareness, self-understanding, interpersonal skills, risk-taking, and
perceived efficacy (Sachs, 2004). As the ability to persevere despite adversity through positive
adaptation, teachers who manage to stay in challenging schools develop such features, mainly
individual strength, and self-efficacy.
One of the main strategies that promote this resilience capacity, according to Yonezawa et
al. (2011), is the building of learning communities. These communities provide the necessary
support to understand and carry out established policies from higher levels of management and
fit them to their local contexts (Lieberman and Mace, 2008). Membership in a professional
peer network such as the National Writing Project (NWP) contributed to strengthening
resilience in the case addressed by Yonezawa et al. (2011) through three areas: (1) technical
update, by improving their writing ability, which turned out to be a pivot to enhance their sense
of self-efficiency in general; (2) cultural support to reflect on their practice, a time that they
would hardly find when immersed in their daily routine in hard-to-staff schools; and (3) the

development of their agency and leadership throughout their experience since their capacities
in the field of writing for teaching purposes and the ability to share it with their peers and exert
influence improved substantially.
This case demonstrates the feasibility of building resilience in a planned way to remedy
the rotation issue in hard-to-staff schools and create the conditions so that motivated teachers
supported by a learning community remain in the schools where they are needed the most. The
challenging situations that require a backup strategy to avoid a high teacher turnover reveal the
confluence of issues framed in two of the identified educational change frames: the Environment
for Effective Quality Teaching and the High Stakes Assessment and Accountability (see Table
25.1). Principals’ resilience and their vision to exercise and intersperse leadership styles,
depending on the stages a school goes through in challenging conditions in an “under review”
status, without losing sight of the overall goal of improvement, highlights the importance of
professional teaching capital for decision-making.
Such is the problem that Harris and Chapman (2002) address in the case of the principals
in charge of Schools Facing Challenging Circumstances (SFCC), according to the category
designed by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) in England, for schools
with chronic low performance, within the framework of the High Stakes Assessment and
Accountability approach (see Table 25.1). In schools under review, principals exercised an
authoritarian style since the situation demanded a task-oriented action; however, this style
is unsustainable in the long run to achieve progressive improvement. Eventually, principals
acquired an approach aimed at distributing leadership roles and empowering the school
community members.
Harris and Chapman (2002) highlight three critical practices developed by school leaders in
these contexts: (1) Investment in team development: A common feature in schools subjected
to successive inspections was the teaching staff’s low morale and a failure perception. To shift
this perception toward achievement-oriented practices and consolidated confidence, principals
resorted to a mixture of pressure and support to motivate their teachers to improve their
technique and encourage them to take innovative strategies. Principals paid particular attention
to those who performed poorly by exercising structural support, individual follow-up,
and continuous monitoring. (2) Relationships: SFCC principals prioritized interpersonal
relationships with their team while developing their qualities. (3) The building of a professional
learning community.
The consensus reached in the literature regarding the importance of a culturally responsive
school policy in challenging urban schools has been consistent. Implementing such procedures
is fundamental for empowering subjects considered culturally deficient and pursuing common
goals to improve school achievement in stressful urban environments. Nonetheless, a culturally
responsive policy itself is not enough. School leaders must develop capacities as meso-level
mediators, as the next section explains.
SCHOOL LEADERS AS MESO-LEVEL MEDIATORS:

COMPLEXITY LEADERSHIP AS AN APPROACH TO GENERATE
SYNERGIES AND FACE CHANGE
The specific challenge of raising achievement requires radicalizing the concept of shared
leadership beyond a professional status and involving the school community. School leaders

become bridges that link school actors to advance in “community building and shared
accountability” (Auerbach, 2010, p. 731). Therefore, school achievement fits into this broader
horizon, so it does not necessarily appear as the nodal point that links parents and the teaching
staff efforts. The synergy between school leaders and the community to reach political targets,
such as empowerment and social justice, occur through particular goals that serve as triggers:
Once I became a principal, what does the community want? Health care was a major issue, and all
those kinds of services. We got a huge grant and it was from going door-to-door and surveying every
parent in that community about what they needed. The number one complaint wasn’t about academics
or their kids’ futures, it was about food and the cafeteria. (Auerbach, 2010, pp. 741–742)
The school lunch problem served as a trigger to incorporate more complex issues like
social justice and a bilingual curriculum. Leaders who operate from this approach level up
parents’ capacities: they recognize their potential, provide them with the necessary tools
to be actors who contribute to the community, and enable their agency’s exercise. These
practices are framed in Auerbach’s (2010) authentic associations. According to Auerbach,
there is a continuum of associations that goes from reluctance to mutual learning. The key to
consolidating genuine partnerships is recognizing parents as knowledgeable subjects. A shift
from a one-sided, school-centered approach to a reciprocal one is necessary to reach this level
of authentic and empowering involvement. In a genuine association, not only an open door
policy is practiced, but also parents take part in decision-making. Authentic partnerships are
based on mutual learning between parents and school and aim for mutual empowerment.
In the case of Auerbach’s (2010) authentic associations, the school leader’s role as
a bridge to establish a relationship based on mutual trust, bilateralism, mutual learning, and
co-construction starts from recognizing their commitment to promote the empowerment of
parents considered deficient. This horizon configures leadership as a meso-level process within
the school as an organization configured according to a multilevel approach, as explained
earlier. A meso-level system links macro-level processes (relating the organizational structure)
with micro-level ones (the leader and followers’ abilities and characteristics). Since these
two levels are mutually built, a meso-level approach considers the interaction between the
organizational context and its members’ behaviors (Gardner and Cogliser, 2009). According
to Bidwell (1965), schools are loosely coupled organizations working in an ecosystem through
multiple levels and applying several decision-making mechanisms (Bidwell and Kasarda,
1980). This loose coupling occurs between multiple levels: teachers and principals, schools
and communities, and between educational and societal demands (Frank and Zhao, 2005).
Concerning the links between the school and the community, the leader’s role as a mediating
agent becomes relevant. Since organizations are complex and unpredictable, the leader
operates as the architect or orchestrator who fosters autonomous networks of organizational
learning, the multilevel process of creating and appropriating knowledge to assimilate change
and achieve innovative strategies (Hannah and Lester, 2009). Organizational learning occurs
through interactions between formal and informal leaders, where their level of influence,
role, capacities, and experience intervene. Knowledge catalysts facilitate these interactions
so that the creative process becomes self-organizing. According to Hamel (2000), knowledge
catalysts operate as clusters of network activists and are embedded within the organization at
different levels to promote organizational learning processes. It is up to the leader to encourage
this process without directly intervening in it. That is, their role must shift from directing

what their organization’s members must learn, to understanding how they can establish the
conditions so that “collectives learn and share knowledge” (Hannah and Lester, 2009, p. 35).
As architects of the organizational learning process, school leaders have a strategic role
in consolidating school gains. Together with the knowledge catalysts, they approve both the
processes and learnings that have delivered innovative results (Hannah and Lester, 2009).
Developing these capacities for organizational learning is urgent in challenging urban schools
where it is necessary to cultivate social capability in fragile statehood contexts. In cases where
the Public Expenditure for Schooling Returns frame’s policies are available (see Table 25.1),
organizational learning helps to circumvent the change process that involves overcoming an
under-review status because of chronic low performance. In terms of synergies to address
shared goals between the school leader and the communities in urban settings, the Complex
Leadership Theory (CLT) is suggestive. Complexity leadership takes place at Complex
Adaptive Systems (CAS). CAS are networked systems similar to a neural network where
interdependent agents interact based on everyday needs. These agents have the ability to solve
problems together through a high adaptive capacity. The CLT offers a meso-level approach to
link bureaucratic dimensions with informal dynamics; thus, leaders in administrative positions
can enable the adaptive capacity; the purpose is to manage the interweaving between the
administrative and the adaptive process (Uhl-Bien and Marion, 2009; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007;
Marion and Uhl-Bien, 2001; Heifetz and Laurie, 2001; Anderson, 1999).
According to Uhl-Bien and Marion (2009), complexity leadership recognizes that change
is unpredictable; therefore, it develops meso-mechanisms that link the organization’s
heterogeneity to encourage creativity. This capacity distinguishes adaptive organizations from
hierarchical structures. Instead of guiding change, the organization member’s mobilization to
shift from a plateau or comfort zone to a more challenging one is encouraged, allowing the
more flexible ones to drag those who tend to stay in their comfort zone. The administrative
role, which rests within the school leader in their position as principal, is essential because
it channels isolated interests at the local level; therefore, all the members get a picture of the
organization’s needs at a broad level. When the administrative function is absent, agents at the
local setting will establish networks to solve their requirements. Eventually, some particular
networks may take the initiative over the school structure itself, as the “Nice White Parents”
case (Joffe-Walt, 2020) illustrates. A middle-high school for Afro-American, Latino, and
Middle Eastern working-class students, the School for International Studies (SIS) tells the
experience of school tours offered by principals willing to attract white students to their
school. While the intention was social and ethnic integration, white, high-income parents came
into the school as clients; ultimately, their vision shaped the school’s schedule.
This kind of parental leadership overrules school leadership when acquiring more decision
power based on their economic, social, and cultural capital. Their power decision allowed
them to guide the school’s priorities under their view (a dual-language French program was
chosen, rather than a more necessary Spanish or Arabic one, according to the school’s majority
enrollment). In this case, the school–family partnership’s balance was uneven because school
leaders abdicated from their focal leader role to favor a particular group’s interests according
to a choice rationale. As Joffe-Walt (2020) states, racial integration in New York’s highly
segregated school districts without discussing racism was gentrification because the white
parents’ culture reproduced its dominant role. While a limited racial integration in segregated
school districts results from choice policies, another side effect of an absent administrative
function can be the ultimate atomization of interests.

Besides the administrative role, Complexity Leadership also exercises the enabling task,
linking the administrative and adaptive ones. Since the adaptive function yields emerging
products or innovations beyond the formal structure framework, the enabling role integrates
them as possible operational results (products, innovations, or new systems). According to
this model, the exercise of adaptive leadership (individual or collective) is helpful when it
fosters a high flow in diverse contents, which, in turn, allow dynamic processes of complexity
to generate innovations and face change (Uhl-Bien and Marion, 2009). These Complexity
Leadership functions refer to integrating urban communities’ cultural knowledge funds within
the curriculum. The incorporation of a varied set of contents fosters adaptive capacity and
delivers untold outcomes.
Interdependence and heterogeneity are two of the main enabling functions in Complexity
Leadership Theory for developing synergies between school leaders and challenging urban
communities. Interdependence is necessary for agents to engage in dynamic interaction
and bond together. Since everyone may not share the goal set, the leader must generate
interdependence to enable synergies and encourage adaptive behavior. On the other hand,
heterogeneity promotes the confluence of different perspectives, which, though uncomfortable,
can produce more creative solutions (Uhl-Bien and Marion, 2009).
The managerial capacity that links Complexity Leadership’s administrative, adaptive, and
enabling functions is a strategic asset in generating synergies between the teaching staff and
community members in challenging urban settings. The margin to link common interests
without reaching atomization is critical in addressing common goals regarding school
achievement and stressful urban environments. The case discussed by Auerbach (2010)
represents an enabling function such as interdependence since school lunch was significant
for all the actors involved, unlike the SIS case mentioned above, where a particular parent
network took over the school’s decision-making. The administrative and directive functions
guided the several interests involved to properly academic achievement goals under a horizon
of empowerment and social justice.
Since schools are “social constructs constantly adapting to their environment” (Jackson,
2005, p. 198), an approach to organizational learning and complexity theory such as those
mentioned is necessary. A proposal applied to leadership in challenging urban schools
incorporating the Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) approach is Kershner and McQuillan’s
(2016). According to these authors, it is necessary to interrupt the status quo to generate
conditions that foster adaptive change. It is up to the school leader to address adaptive change
by balancing the school’s core values while reconfiguring school practices to deal with
a changing environment. These authors present two case studies participating in the mentoring
program of the Lynch Leadership Academy of Boston College, a Catholic and a district school.
In the Catholic school case, instructional leadership was the axis to develop teams with
different tasks to distribute responsibilities. The members were divided into several groups,
which helped them change their practices and generate adaptive capacity. Faced with an
environment of systemic turbulence marked by job uncertainty, the leader triggered precursors
of adaptive change by distributing authority among the different teams, which was a disruptive
activity. Although it enjoyed a more stable work environment, the district school still needed
precursors for adaptive change to face the lack of confidence and projection of cynicism to the
leader due to the high turnover in management positions. The school could not address this
challenge since the new director designed a hierarchical structure with a limited delegation of
tasks among those responsible for the sub-teams. Consequently, teaching staff members stayed

out of decision-making, and the potential for change was low (Kershner and McQuillan,
2016). This case refers to Fullan’s approach (2005), which points out that adaptive change
requires in-depth participation of all those involved.
SCHOOL–COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS: THE INTERWEAVING

OF COMPLEXITY, COLLECTIVE, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
LEADERSHIP FOR STRESSFUL URBAN ENVIRONMENTS
As a learning organization, the school is more effective when control is distributed among
its members (Davis and Sumara, 2006); therefore, school–community partnerships are vital
for school achievement challenges since these goals exceed the school’s capabilities alone.
Some school partnerships, according to Sanders (2001), are (1) businesses/corporations;
(2) universities and educational institutions; (3) government and military agencies; (4)
healthcare organizations; (5) denominational organizations; (6) volunteer organizations; (7)
other community-based organizations; and (8) individual community members. Although
commitment to learning is the ultimate goal, school leaders can break it down into several
aspects; hence the more variety of partners, the greater the ability to achieve that general goal.
Both the principal’s coordination and bilateral communication are crucial to making these
partnerships sustainable (Sanders and Harvey, 2002).
This panorama illustrates the school partners’ spectrum. Challenging urban school
communities are more likely between Sanders’ (2001) 7 and 8 types. As administrative
leaders, principals must link the number and kind of necessary partnerships according to their
context. Since Complexity Leadership points out that school leaders can consolidate these
subjects’ agency through the administrative and enabling functions, a dilemma arises. How to
balance the establishment of associations with other actors without falling into assistentialism
while achieving the empowerment of low-income parents while avoiding the atomization of
interests?
Faced with this problem, we propose to recover collective leadership’s guidelines as well.
Collective leadership involves multiple individuals within a team or organization and acquires
a formal or informal leadership style as time passes (Yammarino et al., 2012). The assimilation
of this style in challenging urban schools requires a sui generis process. First, overcome the
barriers between low-income parents, considered under a deficit status, and the teaching
staff. This change can occur mainly by integrating urban communities’ knowledge funds
into the curriculum and generating a shared vision and a sense of belonging. To address the
common goals of improving school achievement and stressful urban environments, collective
leadership emphasizes the coordination for team effectiveness between the focal leader, in
this case, the principal, and emerging leaders. The focal leader will build the communication
capacity to exercise this collective approach with the teaching staff, the school community,
and other partnerships since it is the most affordable way to generate trust and an equitable
environment (Friedrich et al., 2016).
In challenging urban schools located below the different national achievement scales
or below the students’ expected capacities according to their age and development, the
relationship between the teaching staff and the community is critically fragile (West and
Anscow, 2006). Besides, children and youth are exposed to a “Persistent Traumatic Stress
Environment” (Ginwright, 2016), affecting their capacity for effectiveness and agency at

the collective level. Ginwright (2016) emphasizes that structural inequalities and systemic
exclusion phenomena are the root cause of factors that trigger this toxic environment. Schools
and neighborhoods located in socially harmful settings, crossed by such structural and
systemic phenomena, experience loss of cohesion and trust and a decrease in the capacity to
exercise collective action to achieve full civic participation.
The problem raised by the Persistent Traumatic Stress Environment refers to the conflict
between two educational change frames elaborated to fit the category of challenging
urban schools: Social Justice Through Capacity Building and High Stakes Assessment
and Accountability. While the first focuses on challenging urban schools’ underserved
character, the second emphasizes their status as underperforming schools. The underserved
feature points to structural inequalities and a diverse enrollment composition, while the
underperforming label is related to performance according to indicators such as the Academic
Performance Index (API). We propose Ayers et al.’s (2009) leadership model for social justice
as a feasible approach to address these two frames’ overlapping. This model consists of three
axes: (1) equity, which refers to equal access to the same opportunities, with an emphasis on
redressing historical injustices; (2) activism, instilling in students their agency to transform
their environment, as opposed to conformism or cynicism; (3) social literacy, which involves
raising awareness to confront an oppressive system and resist alienation. Meeting equity
and performance demands for an enrollment exposed to the Persistent Traumatic Stress
Environment is suitable through this model. Along with the Complexity and Collective
leadership approaches, synergies can emerge between the teaching staff and low-income
parents through coordination between the focal and emergent leaders. Such emergent
leaders can arise from both the teaching staff and urban communities, finally recognized as
knowledgeable subjects (Auerbach, 2010).
CONCLUSIONS
Building synergies between school leaders and low-income parents in challenging urban
schools by linking common goals, the improvement of academic achievement and stressful
urban environments, is a process shaped through four major educational change frames that
make up an overlapping continuum (see Table 25.1). We recovered leadership models for
schools with these characteristics under the axis of a culturally responsive school policy given
the Persistent Traumatic Stress Environment’s effects to which the children and youth of the
urban high-poverty districts are exposed.
The High Stakes Assessment and Accountability frame policies exacerbate these effects,
so it is pertinent to incorporate a leadership approach to social justice. These measures are set
within the Social Justice Through Capacity Building frame. It is also necessary to establish
networks of learning communities to promote professional resilience among teaching staff
exposed to high stress, which results in high turnover and, therefore, in the absence of
effective teachers where they are most needed. These strategies are part of the Environment
for Effective Quality Teaching frame (see Table 25.1).
Likewise, meso-level leadership models, framed in the Complex Adaptive Systems, have
been recovered as appropriate strategies to promote adaptive capacity. Once the cultural
diversity of urban communities has been assimilated, collective leadership, where formal
and informal leaders emerge, is feasible. According to the Social Justice Through Capacity

Building frame, Auerbach’s (2010) authentic partnerships based on mutual learning are suitable
to promote the agency of subjects characterized by an underserved status. Strengthening such
capacity is necessary to enable them as partners on equal terms, according to Sanders’ (2001)
typology. The policies and strategies outlined in the Public Expenditure for Schooling Return
frame complement the improvement of school achievement that the High Stakes Assessment
and Accountability frame policies demand. However, in contexts characterized by fragile
statehood, school leaders must deal with distant and inefficient bureaucracies, even though,
technically, there is access to policies shaped in the former frame. In these cases, informal
leadership emerges as a necessity, along with establishing partnerships with other actors.
However, whether or not policies related to the Public Expenditure for Schooling Returns
frame are available, building a shared vision and a sense of belonging between the teaching
staff and urban communities is essential to overcome the barriers that inhibit their linkage.
Such an endeavor highlights the relevance of the school leader as a mediator between
individual and societal outcomes.
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25.

Synergies between school leaders and

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

SCHOOL LEADERS IN CHALLENGING SETTINGS: THE

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

● Internalization of low-performance regarding ethnic, socioeconomic, and gender prejudices.

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

Table 25.1 Challenging urban schools: category continuum

Categories in literature Educational change frame Public policy instrument

Source: Authors’ elaboration.

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

INTEGRATING URBAN COMMUNITIES’ FUNDS OF

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

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SCHOOL LEADERS AND THE TEACHING STAFF:

Performance demands under accountability policies place more stress on underperforming

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

SCHOOL LEADERS AS MESO-LEVEL MEDIATORS:

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

SCHOOL–COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS: THE INTERWEAVING

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

Jacobson, S. (2018). Managing the School Organization. In M. Connolly, D. H. Eddy-Spicer, C. James,

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

Opoku-Asare, N. and Siaw, A. (2015). Rural-Urban Disparity in Students’ Academic Performance in

Maricela Guzmán and Leonardo Oliver Ortiz - 9781839103261

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