Too often, leaders rely on familiar and reactive solutions that stifle innovation. What if instead, leaders could pivot and meet the moment through transformational leadership that centers vision, a mindset for digital equity, and intentional collaboration to innovatively solve new challenges?
The Leadership for Digital Transformation domain of Digital Promise’s Digital Equity Framework addresses the role of leaders in achieving digital equity. This domain is based on two core concepts: Leadership for Digital Equity and Mindsets for Digital Equity and the Learning Environment. Guided by these two components, innovative leaders can establish a vision for technology-driven, equitable, and learner-centered learning experiences.
Leading for digital equity requires leaders to set the conditions within visionary leadership, strategic planning, and collaborative culture for their entire educational ecosystem to contribute to building equitable learning environments that value and promote innovation, sustainable technology infrastructure, and emerging technologies to improve and enhance learning outcomes.
Norwalk Public Schools in Connecticut sought to address the challenge of ensuring digital equity for all in their rapidly changing and diverse community. By utilizing the Digital Equity Framework, the district implemented a comprehensive digital transformation strategy that has evolved from basic device access to an innovative approach that integrates emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) while maintaining focus on their students and larger community.
To accomplish their digital equity goals, Norwalk Public Schools launched two complementary systematic teams of stakeholders: an AI advisory board that includes teachers, students, and administrators who provide input and recommendations related to AI integration, and a strategic board that includes cabinet-level leadership who intentionally integrated equity into their strategic plan and make resource allocation decisions to ensure the district’s ability to sustain their strategic plan for years to come.
Led by Superintendent Dr. Alexandra Estrella, Norwalk Public Schools established a clear vision for digital equity using their Portrait of a Graduate, the district’s overarching vision, and through collaboration with stakeholders at every level of their ecosystem. This effort not only yielded sustainable technical solutions to their challenge—such as developing a clear framework for evaluating new initiatives like AI—it also shifted the culture by elevating the voices of those the district serves by ensuring technology decisions reflect their entire school community’s needs. Their experience demonstrates how strong leadership structures and stakeholder engagement can drive successful technology integration while maintaining focus on equity.
Cultivating mindsets for digital equity and the learning environment means that all members of the education ecosystem are asset-minded, learner-centered, and committed to advocating for access to Powerful Learning experiences that are propelled by technology for all learners. To accomplish this, leaders must understand the role technology can play in effectively addressing learner variability, removing barriers to learning, and increasing technology access for all, including for families and communities who support students’ needs.
To address the challenges of ensuring equitable and effective digital transformation across their district, leaders at Adams 12 Five Star Schools in Colorado implemented a multifaceted approach. First, they created a centralized device management system that ensures all students have access to necessary technology for learning and upgraded infrastructure to provide reliable internet connectivity in all schools. They then tailored their communication strategies to respect and engage their diverse community and fostered a shared vision for digital literacy among their educators.
Adams 12 Five Star Schools’ leadership moves were strategic and learner-centered, ensuring learner and family needs are met. In order to remove barriers to access, they expanded how they communicated with and learned from their community, implementing a multilingual, two-way communication platform to better gather feedback from families on various aspects of education, including the use of technology. In addition to building systems that ensured student and family access to technology, cross-functional teams composed of district curriculum and IT professionals worked together to adopt and implement effective, technology-enhanced instruction tools to support learning.
These two districts exemplify that strategic leadership moves are necessary for digital transformation. Leaders cannot anticipate and actualize digital transformation on their own nor develop coherent systems without attending to key leadership practices and leveraging their internal and external community partners. Using the Digital Equity Framework, these leaders worked collaboratively with their communities to establish a clear vision, strategy, and asset-based, learner-centered mindset to address their digital equity challenges.
Are you ready to begin your digital equity journey? Use the Leadership for Digital Transformation domain as a responsive approach to ensuring digital equity for all. Start by reflecting on current leadership practices as they relate to developing a vision and mindset for digital transformation. After identifying an area of focus, take time to explore the entire Digital Equity Framework and the corresponding leadership competencies; use those competencies and subskills to identify your next steps.
Want to learn more about other Digital Equity Framework domains? Read our blog post about Consistent Access to Devices and Connectivity.
