What is Strong Not Wrong: Seeding and Leading Asset-Based School Improvement Culture

School improvement practices and language often undervalue the assets and voices of students and families, and perpetuate, rather than disrupt, deficit-based narratives about school communities that have been historically underserved and marginalized (Carey, 2014; Moll et al., 1992; Russell et al., 2022; Vélez-Ibáñez & Greenberg, 1992). This dissertation of practice shines a light on how language, power, voice, and engagement intersect in school improvement efforts and explores opportunities to shift from deficit-based and exclusionary practices. This shift highlight school improvements efforts grounded in the assets, strengths, and voices of students and families, helping ensure those most impacted by improvement efforts have the most central seats at the decision-making table. By unpacking the deep roots of formal school improvement practices and language in tenets of white supremacy culture and systemic commitments to sustaining inequitable power dynamics, this work explores opportunities to center and amplify the voices and assets of students and families in formal and informal improvement efforts.This dissertation of practice details use of an adapted appreciative inquiry protocol as a tool to build the capacity of educators to seed and lead asset-based improvement work that prioritizes the voices of students and families (Bergman & Mapp, 2019; Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987). Using a grounded theory methodological approach, this case study highlights how the protocol impacted self-reflection, language, and actions with a group of coinvestigating school leaders in New York City and offers implications for disrupting deficit-based improvement practices and language in school, district, and policy areas. Analyzing and leveraging the “often-overlooked power in language and discourse to influence and control ideas, beliefs, actions, and ultimately culture” (Hill et al., 2016, para. 47) in school improvement efforts, this case study highlights how equity-committed leaders can reshape improvement narratives and culture to ones that center and celebrate, rather than sidestep, the assets, brilliance, and voices of our most underserved and marginalized students.