The Role of Partnerships in Supporting Equity-Centered School Leadership
Lessons From Intensive Work in Eight Urban Districts
This report examines how school districts and a set of external partners—state education agencies, universities, and community-based organizations—worked together to help develop equity-centered principals who effectively lead for all students.
October 2026
Table of Contents
Document
- Author(s)
- Danielle Molle, Richard Halverson, Caleb Probst, Yi-Hwa Liou, Jordan, Mosby, Jonathan Acosta, and Xinya Guan
- Publisher(s)
- Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership Learning/Equity-Centered Leadership (CALL-ECL)
Page Count
40 pages
Summary
How we did this
The authors drew on data collected from 2021 to 2025 across the eight districts participating in the Wallace-supported Equity Centered Pipeline Initiative (ECPI). The data include interviews with district leaders and their partners, documents drafted by district leaders and submitted to Wallace, meeting notes from monthly district-level ECPI meetings and biannual convenings, and an annual survey of districts’ social networks.
Partnerships are central to school district change efforts. They build on the complementary strengths, knowledge, and expertise of multiple organizations to create richer learning opportunities and more responsive initiatives.
But such collaboration is not easy to establish, nurture, and sustain, especially when it comes to advancing equity in schools. The work often comes up against structures and regulations that perpetuate inequities.
This study investigates partnerships between eight large urban districts—Baltimore, Columbus (Ohio), the District of Columbia, Fresno, Jefferson County (Kentucky), Portland (Oregon), San Antonio, and Winston-Salem/Forsyth County—and three other types of organizations: state education agencies, community-based organizations, and universities. The goal is to illustrate how districts and their external partners work together to embed equity in school leadership pathways in order to make those pathways more coherent, transparent, and robust.
The eight districts are part of a six-year, Wallace-supported initiative, the Equity Centered Pipeline Initiative. This enterprise aims to support public schools with building sustainable principal pipelines designed to develop leaders who can move our education systems toward ensuring all students have access to the opportunities and resources they need to realize their full potential.
The authors describe how participating partners engaged with one another and how those relationships developed and changed over time. The report also provides lessons more specific to particular partnerships, such as those between state agencies and school districts, which often lack a history of working together.
Partnerships are more likely to endure if they are mutually beneficial. Partners need to feel that their voices matter and their expertise is relevant.
Key Takeaways
- Strong partnerships are central to district change efforts, including those that seek to advance school leadership for equity.
- Partnerships between school systems, state education agencies, and community organizations are more likely to endure if they are mutually beneficial.
- All partnerships created to advance equity-centered school leadership would benefit from establishing clear expectations, defining participants’ roles early on, and ensuring all parties feel their voices matter and their expertise is relevant.
Topics:
Now Viewing:
Overview
Next: Research Approach
