Lessons in Leadership with Dr. Darryl Williams
With 35 years of experience serving urban schools and school systems, Dr. Darryl Williams is particularly qualified to offer his opinion on the two best jobs in public education. “The best job is a classroom teacher, tied with being a school principal.” So it is only fitting that following a career where he has held not only those two roles, but multiple positions in district leadership, Dr. Williams now enjoys a position at Morgan State University that allows him to nurture young educators seeking to lead school communities and to increase access and opportunity for Black and Brown students in Baltimore.
Serving as Professor of Practice in Morgan’s School of Education and Urban Studies, Dr. Williams is also Assistant Director of the National Center for the Elimination of Educational Disparities. There are many false notions about the causes of inequities in student outcomes for Black and Brown students, with the most damaging belief being that the blame is individual, and not systemic. “Folks have labeled our kids as unable to do the work necessary for career or college. But it’s not about achievement gaps. It’s about opportunity gaps. We have to make sure students have access to rigorous programs, extra curricular activities, and opportunities to demonstrate their learning and interests in a variety of ways.” Frustrated by the narrative that all is negative in urban schools, Dr. Williams asserts that education “is more than just a test score. It’s more than the state giving schools a rating. We need to capture the full story for the greater community, and part of that is retelling what being an educator is all about.”
Reflecting on his own early experiences as a classroom teacher, Dr. Williams can map those learnings to values he still holds today. After graduating from Hampton University in 1988, he took a “good government job with benefits” as a route to financial stability. Both of Williams’s parents were government workers, and it seemed a sensible choice. About a month after he started that job, Williams got a phone call from the assistant principal at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington, DC. Banneker was where Williams had graduated just four years prior as a member of the school’s first graduating class. He was grateful for the strong college preparatory foundation that he received there, and when he was asked to join the math department, he didn’t hesitate.
At Banneker, Williams made it a point to dress in a shirt and tie every day, a detail that former students still recall about him. He was also intentional about absorbing every lesson that he could from the “brilliant faculty members” at Banneker, educators who had been his teachers and were now his colleagues. “They were great resources, but I always wondered if I could live up to that kind of status as a new teacher. We had one science teacher who was getting huge grants from the National Science Foundation, and here I am totally green.” Though it was intimidating to share space with his educational role models, he used their success to fuel his own improvement. He remembers one time when an administrator passed out individual index cards that displayed the average GPA of each teacher’s set of students, listed next to the average GPA for the whole academic department. “Right then was the turning point to say, ‘I have to make sure my kids understand these concepts [as well as my colleagues do]. I gotta up my game!’” An early lesson in using data to self reflect and improve one’s own instructional practice, “it was a wake up call, and it shaped my career.”
As Banneker was an application high school, every student accepted there had evidenced a level of scholastic success in the elementary and middle grades. Still, Dr. Williams recognized that just because students shared college as a desired destination, it didn’t mean that they all learned the same way. Appreciation for students’ individual learning needs was something that he took with him long after his six years on the faculty at Banneker. Taking a position in Montgomery County in Maryland, Dr. Williams was the only Black man in his department. He continued to wear shirts and ties as he taught the “full gamut” of classroom types: English as a Second Language, special education, honors, and entry level courses. Resisting the “stand and deliver” style of instruction, he varied his strategies in order to maximize student engagement. Despite the range of academic skill sets of young people he taught, he maintained the belief that post-secondary education should be the goal. “There is a college for every student. It’s our job to find what might be the best match.”
With unwavering high expectations and a focus on relationships and results, it was no wonder that Dr. Williams moved seamlessly into school administration, eventually assuming leadership roles at the district’s central office. After 24 years in Montgomery County, he was appointed Superintendent of Baltimore County Public Schools in July, 2019. Prioritizing his commitment to equity and access, Dr. Williams increased the number of students in the district completing dual enrollment courses, which allowed many graduates to finish high school with 15-30 college credits already earned. And then, just a few months into his tenure, he and every school system leader faced the biggest challenge of their careers as they were tasked with navigating an unprecedented global pandemic.
Dr. Williams was not only responsible for shepherding the system through the public health elements of the COVID-19 crisis, but drastic (and ongoing) declines in student well being, teacher morale, and staff retention were soon to follow. “Suddenly long standing, deep rooted [operational] issues like school bus transportation… became so political.” He felt the loneliness of the district leadership seat, which was amplified by a lack of aligned support from key stakeholders. “At that time, I saw a lot of my colleagues retire, resign, or like me, choose not to renew their contracts.” When Dr. Williams left the superintendency in 2023, he was eager to ensure that his next role would allow him to continue to put his leadership expertise to great use in service of historically marginalized students.
While Professor Williams has transitioned to the university space, his mind is still firmly on what schools most need in these challenging post-pandemic times. “Family and community engagement is key…giving parents entry points to partner with a school, finding mentors to come in from the churches, fraternities, sororities, and business partners. Expanding the world for students beyond their neighborhoods.” Dr. Williams also stresses that a focus on safe and secure environments is necessary, and he sympathizes with the enormous task of accelerating children’s academic learning and tending to their social and emotional wellness. “As educators, we have to take care of ourselves so that we can take care of our students.”
Research has shown that a determining factor in how long a teacher decides to remain in the profession is the quality of their school leader. Dr. Williams deeply believes in the principal role as essential to school improvement, and is excited to work in partnership with Baltimore City Public Schools, Maryland State Department of Education, the Wallace Foundation and a cohort of universities to redesign what graduate education administration programs look and feel like. He is grateful for Morgan State’s commitment to remaining connected to K-12 schools in the city of Baltimore, as it helps the university stay current and adapt to the evolving needs of educators. “We communicate and listen to what school systems may need before we try to diagnose.”
Through all of his school and system reform efforts and accomplishments, Dr. Williams speaks most proudly about the impact he has made on individual students, and encourages young men of color to strongly consider teaching as a career path. “Former students will say, ‘You don’t remember me, but you never gave up on me. You made me do my work again and again until I got it right,’” he recalls, chuckling as he remembers how strict he was. “The relationships you create with students are lifelong. You may not see all the benefits then and there, but you’ve planted seeds.” For Dr. Williams, there is no hard work and heart work more valuable than exposing young people to the power of their potential, and he invites us all to join him.
