L4L Program Standards
Rigorous program standards guide the Leadership for Learning curriculum. Aligned with state and national standards, the L4L Leadership Standards extend these criteria to emphasize key leadership elements, such as equity and excellence for each and every student.
Leadership for Educational Justice
When systems-focused leaders demonstrate leadership for educational justice, they facilitate collective action to transform systems to become more liberatory, in partnership with students, families, communities, systems-based educators, and other stakeholders.
To do so, they:
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Explicitly model critical and continuous self-reflection about their own leadership and intersectional racial identities in ways that reflect changes in their practice to intervene in systemic inequities.
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Foster collective action to disrupt and decrease race, class, language, culture, disability, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and other group-based disparities and to ensure that the needs, interests, and assets of non-dominant students are central in change efforts.
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Transform power and engage conflict ethically in decision-making with (not for) students, families, communities, and other educators.
Inquiry-Focused Leadership
When systems-focused leaders lead with inquiry, they facilitate systems change as collective inquiry that critically engages expansive data and diverse expertise to understand problems and co-construct solutions towards justice-centered practices, experiences and outcomes.
To do so, they:
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Identify the learning experiences, teaching, and leadership practices, including their own, that reinforce racial and other educational inequities; co-construct theories of action and change that address the systemic roots of those problems; move to collective action; and continuously assess change to intervene in unjust processes and outcomes.
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Collaborate with others to transform qualitative and quantitative data systems in ways that foster humanizing data practices and research use in systemic inquiry and change.
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Cultivate the agency and leadership of other educators, students, families, and communities, especially those marginalized by systems, to shift inequitable power and build solidarities in inquiry processes.
Leadership for Transformative Teaching & Learning
When systems-focused leaders demonstrate leadership for transformative teaching and learning, they leverage the racial and cultural identities, knowledges, and practices of students and their communities and make their own and others’ learning central in their practice.
To do so, they:
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Intentionally and reciprocally lead their own and others’ learning in ways that demonstrably improve their justice-, inquiry-, instructional-, and systems-focused leadership practice.
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Lead the implementation of relevant, rigorous, anti-racist and culturally-responsive instruction that is inclusive of the adults and students in their systems beyond an individual school.
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Design and influence the use of professional evaluation systems, instructional frameworks, and other policies and practices that reinforce adults’ learning and instructional practices aligned with identity-affirming student learning experiences.
Leadership for Equitable Systems
When systems-focused leaders demonstrate leadership for equitable systems, they transform interactions, institutional practices, and structural inequities that perpetuate historical systems of power and oppression.
To do so, they:
- Draw from historical and contemporary community knowledges and practices of racial and communal solidarity in change-making in order to understand, disrupt, and shift systems towards equitable learning for every student.
- Design, influence, and communicate policies and strategically engage laws and governance structures in service of equitable learning and wellbeing for students.
- Generate, allocate, and lead the management of resources to disrupt institutional and structural inequities and increase opportunities for students and communities.