Superintendent turnover is trending back to normal after years of record churn.
Top district leaders left the profession at record rates in the years that followed the pandemic, hitting a three-year high of 23% in the 2024-25 school year. But newly released data from the ILO group’s Superintendent Research Project show some reprieve—the turnover rate of superintendents in the 500 most populous districts in the nation dropped significantly to 17.4% in the 2025-26 school year, according to the nonprofit education policy and research organization.
This is the first time since March 2020 that the turnover rate is close to the pre-pandemic norm of roughly 14-16%. The data also show that women now hold 34% of the superintendent seats across the 500 districts, a 0.8% improvement from the previous year.
Julia Rafal-Baer, the founder and chief executive officer of the ILO group, said she was glad to see some stability start to return for district leaders. Just 78 of the 500 superintendents in the dataset have stayed in their jobs since March 2020, the first year these data were tracked, and their median tenure is 9.2 years, double the usual length of superintendent contracts nationally.
For the first time, ILO has also mapped turnover data to a national database of student achievement scores created by Stanford University. In districts with stable leadership—where the superintendent hasn’t changed since March 2020—student learning appeared better than in districts that changed leaders.
This year’s numbers are a bright spot in an otherwise stark tale of superintendent retention. Over the last five years, the 500 largest districts changed superintendents 745 times; 87 leaders left last year.
“We may have just started to see a revolving door that’s slowing down—not that it’s stopped,” said Rafal-Baer. “One year doesn’t erase six years of instability.”
Here are a few takeaways from the report that could shape the profession in the coming years.
Stability leads to better student outcomes
Previous research has shown that superintendents have little to no impact on student achievement. However, ILO’s new analysis found that in districts with stable leadership, graduation rates went up by 1.17% points. Women-led districts made larger gains in graduation rates (1.41% points) than districts led by men (1.06% points).
While there are a host of factors that improve student achievement and graduation rates, Rafal-Baer said the evidence shows the importance of “organizational continuity.”
“Strategies have time to mature. A leadership team has time to grow their trust and relationships and alignment, and schools [can] continuously move forward on a coherent set of priorities that are not shifting every single school year,” she said.
Exits happened at both ends of the career spectrum
Superintendent turnover grew for those one to two years into the job, and for those who have held their post for more than six years. Those in the middle, who had three to four years on the job, churned out at a lower rate compared to the previous year. The relative stability for mid-career superintendents shows that some communities want to hold onto their leaders at a pivotal time in their journey, said Rafal-Baer.
The story looks different for early-career superintendents who took up their roles in 2020. Half of the 201 superintendents who were hired then left by 2022. For both this group and veteran superintendents, Rafal-Baer said more research is needed to find out who these leaders are, and if their school boards asked them to step down because they weren’t serving the students well enough or if they left of their own volition.
Political tensions with school boards or local parent communities have made it difficult for superintendents to discharge their duties in recent years. Particularly contentious issues—like rights of LGBTQ+ students or book bans—have led to exits and resignations.
These trends highlight the importance of a smooth handover. Rafal-Baer said school boards should focus on building the leader pipeline before a superintendent exits, so that districts’ plans aren’t disrupted by the change.
“Sometimes a change is necessary,” she said. “The issue is whether [school] boards are building the conditions for effective leaders to stay long enough to execute [their plans], and whether transitions are planned well enough to preserve the work rather than restart it.”
Women face barriers on their path to the top leadership position
A little more than a third of superintendents in the nation are women. Within the largest 500 districts, the number of female superintendents went up slightly from 2025, from 33.2% to 34%, reflecting national trends.
Also, in the 500 districts, women made up 40% of all new superintendent appointments in the last year, though it will take up until 2048 for gender parity in superintendent hires, if current trends hold.
If women are more likely to be recruited internally, then districts need to cultivate better pathways for them to rise up the ranks, said Rafal-Baer. Women-led districts with stable leadership have outperformed those led by men, according to the ILO dataset, and a higher number of female superintendents hold doctoral degrees than their male counterparts.
Yet, women face more challenges than men in their pathway to district leadership roles. Women go through a rigorous interview process even if they’ve been an interim leader, which isn’t the case with male candidates, said Rafal-Baer.
“This audition tax that women are more likely to have … is a different set of criteria than what men typically are going through,” she added.
Women are more likely to get the top job if they serve in an interim basis first, the data show. Women are also more likely to convert their interim positions to permanent ones than their male counterparts. More men are recruited externally to be superintendents than women.
But taking on an interim appointment should not be the only pathway available to women, Rafal-Baer argued. Districts need to gather a deep bench of successors, including women, and expose them to the kind of skills and grit needed to do the superintendent job.
“As we say that we want leaders who can really move an academic vision, these women are hiding in plain sight,” said Rafal-Baer.
