What Do Superintendents Want?

By Thomas Sobol

They want to talk about the decline of community in America--and the role of the public schools in creating and sustaining that community.

What do public school superintendents talk about when they get together? In July, we had a chance to find out when about 60 practitioners of this beleaguered calling from all parts of the nation gathered at Teachers College, Columbia University, for some R&R and reflection on the parlous state of the schools they lead. San Francisco and New York City and Omaha, Neb., and Richmond, Va., and Bemidji, Minn., among others, all sat down together and swapped their stories. And despite the group's striking diversity, a common theme emerged.

It's not easy being a public school superintendent these days, so cataloguing the mutual problems was easy: lack of money, too many and conflicting demands, public hostility, uncertain tenure. But surprisingly, once these matters were acknowledged, they were not what superintendents wanted to talk about. The problem that gripped their attention was the decline of community in America--and the role of the public schools in creating...