Randall Lindsey has dedicated his professional career to ensuring that the benefits of our democracy are accessible to all demographic groups attending public, private, and parochial schools. He has taught that "School leaders can only care for the child when they understand what it is like to be part of that child's culture; what it is like to be unable to speak the language of the classroom; or what it is like to go home to a shelter every night." He teaches educational leadership faculty that it is "our responsibility to develop equity-focused, culturally proficient school leaders who connect with children and youth; to get to know and better understand the learner's interests: what they care about, what gives them joy, and what they might wish for if they dared."
After teaching at the junior and senior high levels, Dr. Lindsey's career in higher education began in 1975. He remembers the professoriate as having been overwhelmingly white and male. Few women or people of color held faculty positions, and courses rarely mentioned topics of diversity and equity. Now schools are more diverse, partially due to Dr. Lindsey's leadership. Faculty now examine student achievement gaps/disparities and disproportionality. He has focused attention on privilege and entitlement as outgrowths of systemic sexist and racist oppression, having helped present a conceptual framework of cultural proficiency as a set of tools for addressing issues of equity and access. In having fostered this effort, Dr. Lindsey has encouraged educational leadership faculty to play a prominent role in guiding our country in becoming a truly inclusive democracy.
Randall B. Lindsey is an Emeritus Professor at California State University, Los Angeles. Previously he was Interim Dean at California Lutheran University; a Distinguished Educator in Residence at Pepperdine University; Chair of the Education Department at the University of Redlands; and Directer of the Regional Assistance Centers for Educational Equity--a regional race desegregation assistance center. He has a B.S. from Western Illinois University, an M.S. from the University of Illinois, and a Ph.D. from Georgia State University. He has co-authored Cultural Proficiency (2018), Culturally Proficient Practice (2010), A Culturally Proficient Response to the Common Core (2015), Teaching and Supporting Migrant Children in Our Schools (2016), and Do Our Policies and Leadership Actions Reflect Our Stated Core Values? (2017). In 2016 he was awarded the "Living Legend Award" from the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration.