Two years after she earned her doctorate in Educational Leadership for Social Justice from the LMU School of Education, Laura McGowan-Robinson Ed.D. ’16 approached Manuel Ponce, Jr. M.A. ’09, Ed.D. ’13, director of SOE’s Institute of School Leadership and Administration, to discuss a major problem in K-12 education—and propose a partnership for addressing it.
McGowan-Robinson, then the chief operations officer for the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), was overseeing an initiative that studied ways to diversify the school leadership pipeline. In that role, she led a program that analyzed the impact of leaders of color on outcomes in California public schools for the 2017-18 academic year. SOE was a partner on the research, with two faculty members, Ponce and Karie Huchting, among the study’s co-authors.
The CCSA report noted that while 60 percent of the state’s public-school students identified as Black or Latinx, only 20 percent of California’s public schools had a Black or Latinx leader. Further, it was clear that Black and Latinx students fared better in schools led by educators of color, with significantly lower suspension rates, higher math and English Language Arts test scores, and higher college preparation scores.
The implications were profound and this research would become the catalyst for McGowan-Robinson to found the nonprofit Diversity in Leadership Institute (DLI) in 2019 as a spin-off of her CCSA work. Through policy advocacy and leadership development, DLI aims to create equitable outcomes for historically marginalized students by building a movement of racially diverse and culturally competent public education leaders.
For leadership development, McGowan-Robinson and Ponce worked together to establish the Aspiring Principals of Color Fellowship program, a partnership between DLI and LMU to create a pipeline of leaders reflective of the underserved communities of color in the state’s public schools. Launched in 2021, the program now prepares cohorts based in Los Angeles and San Francisco. LMU provides the coursework and mentorship for the three-semester hybrid program, which leads to a tier-one administrative credential. DLI recruits candidates and oversees the philanthropy that supports their scholarships, to which LMU also contributes.
Of the 115 fellows who have enrolled thus far, approximately half have received promotions before the end of their 16-month program. “The Aspiring Principals of Color Fellowship program is fulfilling a critical need in California by preparing diverse, culturally responsive change agents,” Ponce says. “By the time our candidates complete the fellowship, they not only have their credential and leadership know-how, but also a strong network of like-minded colleagues and faculty mentors who continue to support them.”
While the rigorous curriculum, social justice emphasis, and mentorship provided to fellows has been integral to the program’s success, McGowan-Robinson notes that many couldn’t have enrolled without the financial assistance that the fellowship offers. “For an educator who aspires to be a principal, paying tuition for an administrative credentialing program can be a burden,” McGowan-Robinson says. “DLI removes that barrier by bringing in significant scholarship support. The need in this area is large and no one who wants to step up should be prevented from doing so by their ability to pay.”
Earlier in 2024, the Aspiring Principals of Color Fellowship program received a boost in the form of $10 million in state funding to create the Diverse Education Leaders Pipeline Initiative (DELPI) grant program, available to local education agencies through the California Department of Education. A total of $3.9 million was awarded to Aspire Public Schools, which operates 36 schools in underserved communities across California. Aspire will work in partnership with DLI and LMU to support 131 new fellows through 2026-27, with awards of $30,000 per fellow. Together with additional funds raised by DLI, the grant will enable these fellows to obtain their tier-one administrative credential at no out-of-pocket cost.
The new state funding resulted from the advocacy of McGowan-Robinson and DLI, which organized the Charting the Course to Equity Coalition — more than a dozen organizations and institutions, including LMU, that successfully petitioned the state to make the budget allocation in support of diverse and culturally responsive administrators. “DLI has played a pivotal role in securing this much-needed funding under the extraordinary leadership of Dr. McGowan-Robinson,” Ponce says. “We are excited to partner with DLI and Aspire to expand our work in diversifying the leadership pipeline.”
For McGowan-Robinson, the partnership with LMU represents the culmination of a lifelong journey. The granddaughter of sharecroppers in Mississippi, she grew up in Chicago in a household where education was strongly emphasized. Her mother earned her bachelor’s degree at 40 and was a strong advocate for her children in the area’s public schools. But after McGowan-Robinson graduated from the University of Illinois and began teaching high school English in the same district, she realized that many of her students had vastly different experiences. In 2010, after moving to Los Angeles and becoming a high school English teacher and literacy coach in the L.A. Unified School District, she founded and served as executive director of Crown Preparatory Academy, a middle school in South Los Angeles that is now part of the STEM Prep Schools network. She then decided to pursue her doctorate at LMU, where she delved into the factors contributing to the level of African American parental engagement in a public middle school.
“My experience in LMU’s Ed.D. program not only gave me the tools to study something deeply important to me, but also helped me better understand what social justice is and become a more empathetic leader,” says McGowan-Robinson. (She later earned her administrative credential from SOE also.) “As a proud Lion and double alum, I feel very fortunate to have this partnership where we are helping to bring about important change.”
