This State Is Bucking Gender and Race Trends in School Leadership

The principals in the Lone Star State have made a significant crack in the glass ceiling—a majority of them are now female, new research finds.

Within the ranks of female principals in Texas, close to half are now people of color. Both these trends, captured over a 12-year period in a longitudinal study by the Texas Education Leadership Lab , buck national trends in school leadership. Nationally, female principals of color make up 27 percent of the workforce, compared to 45 percent in Texas.

This demographic change could travel upward, and impact who occupies the high school principalship and top jobs in the school districts. By 2029, most high school principals in Texas will be female, which could result in more women taking up top district level jobs in Texas, said David DeMatthews, the lead author of the study and a professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Texas in Austin.

Nationally, fewer women than men occupy the ranks of high school principals or superintendents, despite the fact that most teachers across grade levels are women. In Texas, however, the number of female high school principals has jumped 10 percentage points during the period of the study. Nationally, the growth in their ranks has only been half as quick.

"I think people know that most elementary school principals are female. But the jump [for high school] is very important for people to notice," said DeMatthews.

While most superintendents in Texas, like in the nation , are men, that could change as more women ascend the ranks, DeMatthews said.

Nationally, school leaders and teachers are more diverse than a decade ago, but they've not kept pace with reflecting the diversity of the students in their schools.

Creating this diversity in leadership is crucial, a body of research shows: Schools with diverse leaders report better test scores and attendance; teacher turnover is lower for those who share an ethnic or cultural background with their administrator; and teachers of color tend to stay on the leadership path when they have role models to look up to.

Texas' efforts to diversify its principal ranks can have positive effects on both ends of the leadership chain, by creating a diverse pool of aspiring principals and superintendents. These findings have implications nationally, too—if the pipeline of educators starts to change at the beginning, it can impact who occupies district-level jobs.

Shifting demographics in Texas

In the last 12 years, there's been a marked increase in the number of principals and assistant principals of color in Texas: the proportion of both Black and Hispanic principals and assistant principals has increased by 5 percentage points each, which outpaces the slight increase (1.8 percentage points) in Hispanic school leaders nationally. The proportion of Black school leaders decreased by 0.5 percent points nationally during the same time.

More than 50 percent of assistant principals in Texas are now people of color, and they are concentrated in suburban schools, similar to principals of color.

These demographic shifts, the study showed, have narrowed the gap between an increasingly diverse student body and their school leaders. In contrast, over the last 12 years, national trends have gone in the opposite direction: there are now fewer Hispanic school leaders vis-à-vis Hispanic students. The gap wasn't narrowed for Black school leaders and students, but it didn't increase either.

The study highlighted other changes in Texas' school leadership:

The higher turnover rate, and the concentration of school leaders of color, in rural or less affluent schools indicates that leaders there need more support to recruit and retain teachers, and keep their school environments stable, DeMatthews said.

It also means that there should be more opportunities for women and people of color to ascend to principal roles in all types of schools.

"For policymakers, the main question is are there talented and experienced people that are not getting the opportunity to move into some of those [leadership] roles?" DeMatthews said.

School districts helped build diverse school leader pipelines

Robert Arredondo, the principal of Mary Carroll High School in Corpus Christi, Texas, is a third-generation educator. His grandfather was the first Mexican American teacher, and later a principal, in the Lockhart school district in Texas in the 1940s.

"Representation and diversity [in education] is always on the radar for me," said Arredondo.

Arredondo is in his third year as principal at Mary Carroll High. He's keen on "leveling the playing field" for students from all backgrounds, and one of the ways of achieving that is to diversify his teacher workforce, he said.

The shared culture between a school leader or teachers and students can open up dialogue between them, which can help identify what students are struggling with, Arredondo said.

A majority of students—80 percent—at Mary Carroll High identified as Hispanic in the 2023-24 school year. While 44 percent of educators at the school were Hispanic, a majority, over 50 percent, identified as white in 2021, according to a public school database published by the Texas Tribune.

Arredondo said he's making intentional efforts to reduce the gap between the ethnicity of most of his students and his teachers. There's an "informational equity issue" with first-generation educators who come from less affluent backgrounds.

"Information about what it takes to become a principal should trickle to all and not just to some [educators]. You don't know what benchmarks to hit along the way," Arredondo said.

To reduce that gap, Arredondo starts mentoring his assistant principals as soon as they join, with information that he received in his own preparation program to become a school leader.

"That way, the learning curve isn't as sharp for them," said Arredondo.

He also credits his school district for communicating to aspiring school leaders what benchmarks they need to hit. A skillset to acquire, for example, is how an aspiring leader creates a goal or a vision for the school.

"Are they including everyone's voice? Did they ask the parents? Did they get all the teachers' voices? You have to intentionally practice this ... creating systems that promote equity," Arredondo said.

When this information is publicly available to every teacher, regardless of background, then everyone has the potential to succeed, he added.

Principals will need to work through the ethnicity gap

Educator preparation programs in Texas have been intentional about getting more women and people of color into the principal and teacher pipeline, said DeMatthews.

In terms of gender and ethnic diversity, the teacher and principal workforce in Texas mirror each other more than a decade ago. However, more needs to be done to recruit and mentor teachers of color so that they can enter the principal pipeline earlier in their careers, he said.

Bridget Farr, the principal of Winn Montessori Elementary School in Austin, Texas, wants to increase the diversity within her pool of 30 teachers. She works with the teaching assistants in her school—who tend to be from more diverse backgrounds than the teachers—to understand what their leadership goals are.

"We lost two assistant teachers last year, but they went back to get their bachelor's degree in education. Another one is finishing up [this year] at a historically Black college, and we have a position waiting for her. I think this is going to be one of the ways to grow our staff, and also grow diverse," said Farr.

As for her own journey as an educator, Farr believes she's made it to the principal position because she was tapped early in her journey as an educator.

"I felt like I had to prove myself before I applied for the principalship. There's research now to show women set these barriers for themselves to enter into [leadership] positions. The best way to counteract that having people actively reach out and recruit," said Farr.

When she was a teacher, her assistant principal reached out to Farr about taking on a leadership role.

Farr, who is white, now leads a school where 60 percent of students identify as Hispanic and more than 20 percent are Black. Farr said it was initially a challenge to convince the parents that she was the right fit for the school.

To build that trust, Farr said she's been intentional about including all parents in school events and campus advisory councils. She noticed that more parents showed up to an event if the invitation made it clear that translation services would be available. Evening events, and ones where their children were recognized or celebrated, also drew wider parent engagement from more diverse families.

"Historically, schools have misunderstood lack of parent attendance as lack of parent engagement or care. That's not true," Farr said.

Farr's focus on recruiting teachers early hasn't yet eased the school's teacher retention problem, which, she said, is a major contributor to her stress as a principal. She started her principal tenure three years ago with 11 vacancies, which is now down to two.

"It's the constant stress of having to figure out who's going to watch children, and to ask teachers to take on the additional burden of splitting a class," she said. "That constant wearing down of everyone, ... leads to that [shorter tenure] for principals and assistant principals and teachers.

"If we can find a way to stabilize this, we can get a lot more people interested in becoming teachers."