Leadership

A Profile of Superintendents: To hear the media tell it, superintendents hate their jobs, work autocratically, and end up getting canned. But, in a forthcoming paper, Thomas E. Glass found just the opposite.

The picture that emerges from Mr. Glass' study of the profession is one of relative stability and contentment. Mr. Glass, a former superintendent and now a professor of education leadership at the University of Memphis, polled 2,262 of the nation's nearly 14,000 district superintendents.

Nearly 57 percent of the superintendents expressed "considerable" fulfillment with the job, and another 37 percent reported "moderate" satisfaction. About 69 percent said they seek citizen participation "all the time" or "frequently." And 54 percent had served between six and 15 years, while another 17 percent...