Advocacy Leadership
Toward a Post-Reform Agenda in Education
Critical Social Thought Series

In this timely and important new book, Gary Anderson provides a devastating critique of why a managerial role for educational leaders is counterproductive, especially for improving opportunities for low-income students and students of color, and instead proposes ways of re-theorizing educational leadership to emphasize its advocacy role. Advocacy Leadership lays out a post-reform agenda that moves beyond the neo-liberal, competition framework to define a new accountability, a new pedagogy, and a new leadership role definition. Drawing on personal narrative, discourse analysis, and interdisciplinary scholarship, Anderson delivers a compelling argument for the need to move away from current inauthentic and inequitable approaches to school reform in order to jump-start a conversation about an alternative vision of education today.

Series Editor Introduction, MICHAEL W. APPLE

Foreword: Advocates, Managers, Leaders, and Social Entrepreneurs? The Future of Educational Leadership, JANELLE SCOTT

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. School Reform, Authenticity, and Advocacy

2. Authentic Leadership

3. The New Economy of Schooling

4. Disciplining Leaders: Mediating the New Economy

5. Toward an Authentic Distribution of Leadership

6. Toward a Post-Reform Agenda

Appendix A

Notes

References

Index

Gary L Anderson is a former teacher and principal, and is currently a Professor of Educational Leadership in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University where he co-developed a new masters degree in Educational Leadership, Politics, and Advocacy.