School superintendents face numerous challenges, high demands, and pressures from the community, school board, and stakeholders. State and federal accountability policies and mandates contribute to rising levels of stress for superintendents, which negatively affects their health and well-being. As a result, superintendents are leaving their…

Educational policy in the United States in the past decade has focused on eliminating the achievement gap by establishing legislation orienting educators toward research-based evidence and increased accountability at all levels of the system (Daly, Liou et al., 2014). Educational leaders play an important role in initiating and maintaining change,…

As presented in the qualitative research study, women represent only 27% of all 14,000 superintendents nationally (American Association of School Administrators [AASA], 2020) and 30% in New York State (NYS Council of School Superintendents [NYSCOSS], Snapshot IX, 2015). This study was based on a qualitative description design, in which the…

School superintendents face complex issues on a regular basis, these issues include but are not limited to scarce resources, the politics of the school board and conflicting demands from the community (Noppe, Yager, Webb, & Sheng, 2013). In March 2020, the United States faced an unprecedented event when the COVID-19 pandemic forced many…

Trust is never more important than during a crisis. For years, researchers have been studying trust in organizations and schools, focusing on the principal and teacher relationship and its impact on school climate. The literature has been less focused, however, on the superintendent and principal relationship--and the role trust plays within that…

As schools continue to battle with calls for reform and restructuring, understanding important aspects of change leadership is needed in explaining factors that facilitate successful implementation of planned changes in schools. Certain personal and school district characteristics have been reported in the literature as having impact or influence…

The purpose of this study is to examine differences in the career pathways and experience of male and female superintendents employed in Illinois. In order to achieve this overall objective, the researcher examined gender differences in the career pathways of Illinois superintendents as well as gender differences in the perceptions of…

School districts face the problem of superintendents who have several demanding, fragmented, and competing roles and who lack the knowledge of learning theory and the skills for collaborative instructional leadership needed to guide instructional improvement. The purpose of this single case study was to address the instructional leadership role of…

This research studied the predictive relationship of educational top leadership tenure on school performance. Specifically, it examined whether the tenure of top educational leaders, superintendents, and school business officials predicts school performance as measured by the 2019 Illinois State Board of Education School Performance Indicator…

Female superintendents across the nation comprise approximately 27% of the population (Finnan et al., 2015), while female teachers account for approximately 75% of the population (Robinson et al., 2017). In Ohio, the gender gap between male and female superintendents is more pronounced with 16.8% of superintendents identifying as female at the…

This research study, using institutional theory as a framework, examines the role of superintendents in promoting and impacting innovation in Virginia's public schools. The study engaged fourteen current Virginia superintendents in semi-structured interviews, exploring their perspectives on fostering an innovative culture within their school…

Racism, social media, and free speech collide on a high school campus when a student creates an offensive poster that a classmate posts on social media. This case describes a school administrator's conversations and actions with students, teachers, and the community addressing bigotry, race, and free speech on campus. The scenario is presented…

For this comprehensive literature review, we begin by framing our study with a scholarship review of the theorizing of place-based leadership and rural administrators. We then synthesize research on the practice and experiences of district administrators, including superintendents, school boards, and other ancillary leaders. We identify multiple…

Traditional grading practices have been in place for well over a hundred years and grades received served to identify in which subjects a student is "smart" or in which ones they are not (Dewitt, 2017). The problem with traditional grading is that it does not provide qualitative information on the difference between an A, B, C, D, or F…

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine the understanding of possible reasons for a large gender gap in the number of men and women serving as PK-12 public school district superintendents in Iowa in 2022-2023. This study provided information on the career path experiences of female superintendents compared to male superintendents…