Comprehensive and detailed research and data about some of the most powerful players in K-12 education were nearly nonexistent five years ago.
There was little knowledge about superintendent demographics by state, what made these leaders successful in their jobs, how often they left their positions and why, and the effect of superintendent turnover on student achievement.
Information about district leaders’ average tenure, demographics, and previous professional experience had generally been limited to surveys with relatively small sample sizes, analyses of individual states, or research about only the country’s largest districts. The National Center for Education Statistics collected information about teacher and principal characteristics and turnover, but little on superintendents.
Now, largely thanks to a handful of researchers who are trying to fill that void, state administrator associations and leadership preparation and support groups have information they can act on. They have data on superintendents in their states to make more informed decisions about how to advocate on their behalf. They have information to help them develop more meaningful mentorship programs for new superintendents. They have insights so they can work to set women and other underrepresented groups up for success in a field traditionally dominated by white males.
“At the core, there are certain things that the research can help us develop in terms of tools or training or things like that to allow us to better prepare superintendents,” said Rachel White, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Texas at Austin who has spearheaded much of the new research about superintendents.
Martha Salazar-Zamora, president of the Texas Association of School Administrators and the superintendent in Tomball, near Houston, had long been looking for information on what superintendents need from their school boards and communities so they’d be more likely to stay in their jobs long-term and buck the national trend of leaders leaving after five to six years.
Increasingly, those kinds of insights from superintendents writ large are now available.
“Now, probably more than ever, we’ll have to look to the research that we have to show how successful leaders have stayed in the seat—not just how they got a job, but how they and why they kept the job,” Salazar-Zamora said.
State administrator organizations partner with researchers for help
In Texas, the administrator association is using new data on the state’s district leaders to make informed decisions on what professional development new and tenured superintendents need, how to develop a strong and diverse pipeline of future superintendents, and even training that school board members may find useful.
Those insights stem from a report White, fellow University of Texas at Austin researcher David DeMatthews, and team developed in collaboration with the Texas Association of School Administrators that used state and national data to analyze trends in the Texas superintendent workforce between the 2010-11 and 2023-24 school years.
Data show Texas has made strides in addressing gender disparities in districts’ top roles (the percentage of women in the superintendency has increased more than 10 percentage points in the past 15 years to about 25 percent). But the percentage of female superintendents still lags behind the national figure of 28 percent.
So, the Texas administrator association can celebrate its progress but also use data about Texas and other states to determine “how to help people get the job—and get them into the right job,” Salazar-Zamora said.
“We’ve used the research to help prepare people—from resume building to interview practice and so on—and then also to determine which districts might be a good fit, because not all districts are the same or have the same issues or dynamics,” she said. “That’s important and can help with the longevity of people in the positions, which benefits everyone because what the research also shows is that you have greater success as a district when you don’t continuously have leadership changes.”
Like Texas, Ohio’s administrators organization has used better research in recent years.
The Buckeye Association of School Administrators worked with researchers to develop a report specific to Ohio superintendents, diving deep via a widespread survey into the leaders’ experiences and needs. The association has used the findings to improve its mentorship programs for new superintendents.
Ohio’s report showed men and women in the superintendency received different types of mentorship in the association’s structured programs that pair new leaders with more experienced counterparts. The survey showed men were more likely than women to receive mentorship on community engagement, finance and budgeting, school board relations, policy and law, and organization and time management. But women reported wanting to receive more mentorship on many of those topics, particularly finance and budgeting and navigating politics, according to the report.
The report also explored superintendents’ biggest barriers to attending the organization’s statewide conference and other professional development opportunities, so the association could make those opportunities more widely available.
More coordinated efforts to research district leaders are emerging
Much of the new and existing research about superintendents—including the reports developed for state administrator associations—can be traced back to White, the professor in Texas. She’s also the daughter of a longtime school board member, and a former school board member herself.
When she went to college at the University of Michigan, there were courses she couldn’t take and majors she couldn’t pursue because she didn’t take the prerequisite classes in high school—they weren’t available at her school, she said.
“I realized then that there were decisions made—and they did the best they could with what they had—but they were very influential and impactful,” White said. “It really impacted me and that was one of the big moments where I was like, ‘Oh, these decisions [district leaders] make really matter.”
Later, she worked as a policy analyst for Michigan’s state administrator association and again witnessed firsthand the impact of seemingly small decisions on things like school funding formulas and seclusion and restraint policies.
In 2019, White created a database with information about every superintendent in the country as part of a research project and reached out to every one to administer a survey. No similar database existed previously.
The undertaking opened White’s eyes to the lack of organized, comprehensive information on the people leading the nation’s approximately 13,000 public school districts. Changing that has been a focus of her work ever since. In fact, she’s leading an effort she’s dubbed The Superintendent Lab to coordinate other researchers’ work on the topic and develop even more datasets about school district leaders.
The goal: Make data robust and accessible enough that aspiring superintendents and those already in the seats feel seen and supported.
Data and research can also help address the longstanding trend and concerns about high superintendent turnover by providing more complete information about it: discrepancies in salary, gender, and race; what superintendents need to feel supported in and prepared for their jobs; and how community politics affect leaders.
“There’s a lot of power in being able to use data to pair with personal stories to help yourself and others better understand your life experiences,” White said. “...There’s value in their experiences being documented and cared about, and that people can see themselves in the data.”
