Repeated turnover among school district superintendents can hamper students’ achievement in math and reading, compared with districts with stable leadership, according to new research challenging a popular narrative that district leaders are too far removed from the classroom to affect students’ learning.
The paper, published this month by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, is among the first to examine the consequences of superintendent turnover, and the first to explore the cumulative effects of multiple leadership changes over a short period. It comes as separate, newly released data show 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 after peaking at 23% the school year prior. Still, the annual turnover rate is above pre-pandemic norms of about 14-16%.
And that turnover carries consequences, particularly when districts experience repeated churn, the research confirms.
The study, conducted by Rachel White, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Texas, found that districts with more than one leadership change over seven years, between 2019 and 2025, showed nearly a month less learning in math than districts with no superintendent changes.
“Superintendent instability and its effect on students’ learning is something we didn’t have a ton of information on before, but the big takeaway here is that there is a relationship between superintendent stability and student achievement,” White said.
But not all departures are equal, White said.
When a district leader leaves under contentious circumstances—such as being fired after disagreements with board members over political issues, like book bans, for example—it is associated with roughly twice the student achievement penalty of an amicable departure, such as a retirement or the natural end of a superintendent’s contract.
The majority of districts that experienced two or more superintendent changes in the seven-year research period enroll high concentrations of students in poverty, meaning already-disadvantaged students are often most affected by superintendent instability, White said.
White’s research finds associations—not causal effects—between superintendent instability and student achievement, and the effects are modest. But, she said, bolstering superintendent stability could be relatively cheap to pursue through thoughtful contract design, succession planning, and a focus on school board relationships and conflict management in superintendent preparation programs.
The research also suggests that school boards weighing whether to sever ties with a superintendent “should be asking not just whether, but why they are doing so, because the decision will likely have trickle down effects into the classroom.”
“If, when a new superintendent comes in, the school board and superintendent are really good about setting norms and developing a culture of dialogue and trust, that could potentially be all that you need to do to try to mitigate some of these effects,” White said.
Multiple superintendent changes had bigger effects
Only about half of superintendents new to their district in fall 2020 were still serving there in fall 2024. Moreover, two-thirds of public school districts have experienced at least one superintendent change since 2019. Of those, more than 25% have experienced two or more turnovers in that time.
The association between superintendent stability and student achievement roughly doubled between districts with one transition and those with two or more.
Districts with one superintendent change showed about 1.5 fewer weeks of learning in both math and reading than those with no turnover in the same period, according to White’s research, which draws on data from the Stanford Education Data Archives, which provides standardized district-level student achievement estimates using state-level standardized test data for 3rd through 8th grades in 2019-2025.
Districts with two or more superintendent changes trailed those with no leadership change by about a month in students’ math achievement and three weeks in reading.
Superintendent stability can benefit long-term strategic planning
Past research has focused on students’ test scores in the year or two immediately following a leadership change, and has not examined the effects of chronic instability. That research found that student achievement generally decreases in the years after a superintendent’s departure, by a statistically significant, but small, amount that rebounds in subsequent years.
White argues that chronic instability and turnover in districts’ top positions has more of an effect than previously studied. Rather than treating a superintendent departure as a singular event or point in time, White wrote that superintendent stability enables the accumulation of knowledge—about a community’s history and dynamics, assets and strengths, needs, resource constraints, and initiatives—that reaches classrooms. Conversely, repeated transitions can disrupt that knowledge and the ability for districts to carry out longer-term initiatives.
“For example, a stable superintendent may be better able to sustain a coherent instructional vision across budget cycles, retain high-quality and effective staff, protect multi-year reforms to allow them to mature, and maintain board and community trust,” the paper concluded.
In her research, White considered that districts with more superintendent transitions may have been on different student achievement trajectories to begin with. In other words, it is possible that districts with chronic superintendent turnover already had lower student achievement trends than other districts. But her findings were consistent even after controlling for differing achievement trends before the study period.
Superintendent prep programs should emphasize school board relationship building
Moving forward, school boards should carefully weigh their rationale for parting ways with a superintendent, White said. Before firing a leader, boards should distinguish between genuine concerns about effectiveness and those related to political, ideological, or personal differences that are unrelated to their job duties as the district leader, she said.
“If there is concern with a superintendent’s performance, boards should not jump directly to removal, but should first ask whether the current superintendent could improve with more support, mentorship, professional development, or clearer expectations,” she wrote.
She suggested that state policymakers may also consider allowing for longer contract terms—rather than the traditional two to four years—that build superintendent longevity expectations into contracts.
State education agencies could also identify high-needs and high-poverty districts to support their superintendents directly through support networks and mentoring opportunities, White said.
Finally, superintendent preparation programs should emphasize training in school board relations, conflict management, and community engagement.
