Equity Island: District Equity Director Role Design and the Horizontal Siloing of Equity Work

Authors

• Andrew Matschiner, Chapman UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-21-2026

Abstract

Many P–12 districts have established equity director (ED) roles amid social and political pressure, often with limited attention to intentional role design. Drawing on interview and survey data from 72 EDs across 29 states, this article presents the largest and most geographically distributed examination of ED role design to date. Analyzing role design characteristics and their consequences for equity-focused organizational learning, the findings identify three role design dynamics: rank with limited resources, access with limited authority, and celebration with limited collaboration. Collectively, these design decisions often relegate ED roles and equity work to a horizontally siloed district island, constraining the equity-oriented organizational learning and impact that roles are intended to drive.

Comments

This is an Accepted Manuscript version of an article accepted for publication in Leadership and Policy in Schools in 2026 at https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2026.2651721. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Recommended Citation

Matschiner, A. (2026). Equity Island: District Equity Director Role Design and the Horizontal Siloing of Equity Work. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2026.2651721

Peer Reviewed

1

Copyright

Taylor & Francis

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License