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\nArticle reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2025. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero)  \nLeading During Crisis: State and Local Education Leaders’ Equity Focused Approaches During the COVID-19 Pandemic  \nOgechi N. Irondi  \nHayley Weddle  \nUniversity of Pittsburgh  \nAyesha K. Hashim  \nNWEA  \nThe COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated equity issues in education, spanning race, disability, language, and socioeconomic status. However, few studies examine the ways that district or state educational leaders consider equity in their decisionmaking during a crisis. The purpose of this study is to examine how K-12 state and local leaders conceptualized equity and actualized equitable policies and practices during the pandemic. We conducted a multi-level case study, interviewing state and local-level educational leaders (n = 64) from five school districts in the state of Michigan. Our findings reveal that leaders formed equity visions focused on meeting students’individual needs, which were enacted differently at the state and local levels. Our findings demonstrate the need for partnerships across educational levels to promote equity-oriented change in systems, practices, and policies. Implications of our study extend beyond the COVID-19 pandemic to other crises, such as natural disasters or acts of violence, that can exacerbate inequities within education.  \nKeywords: equity-oriented leadership, educational equity, COVID-19 response, qualitative research  \nIntroduction  \nIn March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted schools and student learning with, at its peak, approximately 124,[000 U.S. school](000 U.S. school) closures affecting 55.1 million students nationwide (Peele & Riser-Kositsky, 2021) . This unprecedented crisis has been well documented through various scholars who highlight the challenges faced by schools, families, and students during the pandemic (Singer et al., 2022), as well as educational leader responses to the impacts of COVID-19 (De Voto & Superfine, 2023; De Voto et al., 2023) . More importantly though, the COVID-19 pandemic and its challenges exacerbated the pre-existing, long-standing educational equity crisis spanning race, disability, language, and socioeconomic status (Haderlein et al., 2021; Ladson-Billings, 2006) . The Office of Civil Rights (2021) noted that the pandemic  \n[deepened] divides in educational opportunity across our nation’s classrooms. . .[and] many of these impacts are falling disproportionatelyon students who went into the pandemic with the greatest educational needs and fewest opportunities—many of them from historically marginalized and underserved groups. (p. ii)  \nThe purpose of this study is to examine how K-12 state and local-level educational leaders in Michigan conceptualized equity and actualized equitable policies and practices during the pandemic. Specifically, we ask the following questions: (1) How did state and local-level leaders conceptualize equity within their contexts during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis? (2) How did leaders prioritize equity in their decision-making in response to the pandemic and how, if at all, did these priorities differ based on their roles at the state or local level of the educational system? Much of the current research on crisis leadership is focused on organizational leadership through a managerial lens (see Grissom & Condon, 2021) and does not address challenges related to equity before, during, and after a crisis. This focus on equity is necessary as we consider the possibility of future crises, such as natural disasters or acts of violence in schools.  \nRecognizing that there is no single definition of equity—despite its frequent use with education policy scholars (Freidus & Turner, 2023)—we define equity in alignmen","cbCaiqQVQMVpBSJ5","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiqQVQMVpBSJ5","pdf",523834,"English","# Introduction\n## Study purpose and research questions\n## Equity as a conceptual framework\n## Study setting and methods","[{\"question\":\"What problem does the study address?\",\"answer\":\"The study examines how K-12 state and local education leaders conceptualized equity and enacted equitable policies and practices during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.\"},{\"question\":\"How was the research conducted?\",\"answer\":\"Researchers conducted a multi-level case study, interviewing 64 state and local education leaders from five school districts in Michigan.\"},{\"question\":\"What do the findings show about leaders’ approach to equity?\",\"answer\":\"Leaders developed equity visions focused on meeting students’ individual needs, and these approaches were enacted differently at the state and local levels.\"},{\"question\":\"Why do the authors argue partnerships are important?\",\"answer\":\"The study concludes that partnerships across educational levels are necessary to promote equity-oriented change in systems, practices, and policies, extending beyond COVID-19 to other crises.\"}]","Leading During Crisis - State and Local Education Leaders’ Equity Focused Approaches During the COVID-19 Pandemic | PDF",1792069324]