Taylor N. Allbright
Experienced Researcher and Educator
Taylor N. Allbright, PhD, is a researcher and educator with nearly 15 years of professional experience. Throughout her career she has sought to advance equity in K-12 schools through scholarship, teaching, and supporting educational leaders.
Dr. Allbright's past research has focused on analyzing education policy implementation, with a particular interest in understanding the ways leaders seek to promote equity and inclusion in K-12 education. Her research has yielded actionable insights for school improvement. She is a skilled qualitative methodologist, and I have also enjoyed opportunities to practice mixed methods and survey-based research designs.
Dr. Allbright began her career as a high school English and Ethnic Studies teacher, where I developed the foundational pedagogical skills that have served me throughout my career. Dr. Allbright has also served as an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at Cal Poly Pomona. She earned her PhD in Urban Education Policy from the University of Southern California.
Featured Publications
August 2023
In this study, we used critical discourse analysis to examine what school websites convey about the expected roles of educators and students. We analyzed 13 high school websites from a mid-sized urban district that has implemented several market-based reforms and has a centralized school choice model. We employed the concept of scripts from institutional theory to analyze what messages these websites communicate about the roles of different educational actors, how these messages relate to existing societal power dynamics, and how they relate to the school model or school demographics. For students and educators, the sites expressed that students had an important problem, while the school and educators were offered as the solution. This common framework manifested in four distinct patterns, which we describe as the savior, cultivation, assimilation, and marketplace scripts. Implications: By critically examining school websites and other semiotic materials, leaders and other stakeholders can work to “root out” potentially harmful assumptions and narratives and envision alternatives that offer empowerment and transformation.
Policy Narratives of Accountability and Social-Emotional Learning
February 2020
The paradigm of test-based accountability has been a dominant force for decades, yet some argue that we have recently witnessed a dramatic change in the key beliefs influencing educational policy. To understand the extent of this transformation, we investigated the policy narrative supporting the adoption of a multiple measure accountability system in California’s CORE Districts. Our data revealed a narrative integrating key beliefs about knowledge, accountability, and social-emotional learning. This narrative continues the major themes of the previous accountability paradigm, but with two notable differences regarding the use of measurement data and role of social-emotional learning.
June 2019
There is a growing consensus in education that schools can and should attend to students’ social-emotional development. Emerging research and popular texts indicate that students’ mindsets, beliefs, dispositions, emotions and behaviors can advance outcomes, such as college readiness, career success, mental health and relationships. Despite this growing awareness, many districts and schools are still struggling to implement strategies that develop students’ social-emotional skills. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap by examining the social-emotional learning (SEL) practices in ten middle schools with strong student-reported data on SEL outcomes, particularly for African American and Latinx students.
February 2019
We examine how district administrators’ conceptions of equity relate to the implementation of finance reform. We use sensemaking theory and four views of equity—libertarian, liberal, democratic liberal, and transformative—to guide a case study of two districts, finding evidence of two conceptions of equity: (1) greater resources for students with greater needs and (2) equal distribution of resources for all students. One district demonstrated an organization-wide belief in the first conception, whereas the other conveyed individual-level understandings of both conceptions. These beliefs were mirrored in resource allocation decisions and informed by districts’ student demographics, organizational identities, and perceptions of adequacy.
Selected Course Syllabi
Spring 2021
This course will support leaders in critically analyzing the broader policy environment in which they are situated, and it will also facilitate leaders’ abilities to design and communicate policy alternatives within their own practice. Drawing on leading theoretical perspectives in the educational policy literature, we will examine the stages of the policy process—agenda-setting, definition of problems and goals, policy design, adoption, and implementation. We will also dive into key topics in the current education policy discourse, examining relevant scholarship and recent publications from prominent policy research organizations.
Summer 2020
This course is designed to support the development of key skills and knowledge that will allow students to successfully complete their doctoral degrees, with a particular focus on preparing for the doctoral dissertation.
Fall 2019
This EdD course aims to prepare students to design and conduct qualitative research regarding problems of practice in educational leadership. In particular, the purpose of this course is to support students in developing key methodological skills needed for their doctoral dissertations. While the main emphasis of this course is on qualitative research, we also touch on mixed-method designs.
Fall 2019
The purpose of this EdD course is to prepare educational leaders to advance equity and social justice in education—both as scholars and as practitioners. To allow for in-depth exploration of one dimension of the equity conversation, course readings will foreground issues of racial equity, though we will also examine intersecting dynamics such as class, gender, language, sexuality, and ability. In the latter half of the course, we will turn to ways that practitioners might advance social justice, exploring prominent leadership frameworks and examining specific concerns and strategies regarding educational equity.
