Community-Based Equity Audits: A Practical Approach for Educational Leaders to Support Equitable Community-School Improvements

Purpose: To equitably transform urban schools of color and the neighborhoods where they are nested requires approaches that promote community equity and foster solidarity among a range of stakeholders. However, most school-community approaches solely focus on improving school-based outcomes and leave educational leaders with little guidance for how to critically understand their school's community context and act in solidarity with neighborhood stakeholders on community issues. The purpose of this conceptual article is to introduce what I call community-based equity audits and explain how educational leaders can use this process to work toward equitable school-community outcomes. Method and Approach: This process builds on equity audits in educational leadership, community audits, and community-based research practices and is theoretically grounded in Freirean dialogue. To demonstrate its impacts, this article draws on reflections of aspiring principals who conducted community-based equity audits in a leadership preparation program. Findings: The community-based equity audit consists of four phases: disrupt deficit views about community, conduct initial community inquiry and shared community experiences, establish a community leadership team, and collect equity, asset-based community data for action. Implications: This instrument is developed to guide educational leaders, and those who prepare them, in creating context-specific, equitable school-community solutions.