One critical element to maintaining a close, productive and enduring partnership with the governing board is a well-designed and executed process for board evaluation of the superintendent's performance. For the board's evaluation to be a powerful partnership-building tool, it must be based on two sets of performance targets. The two basic steps…

Unlike mathematical computations where there are definite answers, successful communications in public education is not an exact science. There are, however, public opinion research tools and communication strategies that can help you succeed. At its core, all efforts in advocacy are essentially about strategic communications. Whether your target…

In this article, the author discusses how superintendents function in an environment of nearly continuous turbulence challenged by concerns and pressures that compete for their attention and resolution. The turbulence is inescapable. Today it constitutes the natural--but not the exceptional--environment of school board politics, local…

You can see it in their eyes--the hurt, the doubt, the humiliation, the embarrassment. They are "broken wing" superintendents, those who have hit the glass wall of rejection and failure. They flew, some with no warning, smack into the window pane of contract buyouts or termination. The high flyers have flopped from the sky, dazed onto the deck,…

In her 27 years as an administrator in Merrimack, New Hampshire, Marge Chiafery can legitimately claim to have seen the best of times and the worst. The high moments were the earlier years when Merrimack's job-sharing initiative, teacher evaluation system and middle school project promoting parent-child communication were emulated statewide. The…

In this article, the author, superintendent of the Nixa R-II School District, Nixa, Missouri, describes what it is like to work with a board of education that has been named the Outstanding School Board of the Year in its state twice since 2000? He feels that the keys to the strong superintendent-board relationship are effective communication and…

This article reports on ethics issues involving school leaders. Some superintendents have landed in murky ethical waters for their ties to for-profit companies, highlighting the temptations administrators face as industry and education increasingly intersect. Some questionable judgments by superintendents--from accepting company-paid trips to…

When John Whritner was hired for his first superintendency, the school system he soon would lead had recently approved a town budget for education. By the time Whritner showed up for work in East Lyme, Conn., the fickle electorate had changed its collective mindset and reversed its approval by referendum. This article discusses how superintendents…

This study illustrates Professor William P. Foster's ideas about narratives of schooling, leadership, and community inherent in his critical theory of educational leadership. The case study explored how a superintendent of a regional educational agency, along with 10 district-level superintendents in the agency's service area, shifted from…

Alignment means that in order to improve student achievement and learning, school districts need to have clear standards of attainment with which their curriculum and accountability measures must align. At the state level, this notion of alignment or coherence refers to the state-developed policies that comprise its accountability system. In the…

The recent resignations of three prominent black female superintendents--Arlene Ackerman of San Francisco, Barbara Byrd-Bennett of Cleveland, and Thandiwe Peebles of Minneapolis--have prompted renewed discussion of the roles race and gender play in the superintendency. Current and former such leaders said in interviews that grappling with negative…

AASA began an inquiry in 2001 to understand how barriers to effective after-school programs could be overcome by school district leaders. The issue, well-known anecdotally, had not to date been researched. School leaders tend to agree that after-school programs are sound educationally but struggle to operate and sustain such programs.…

Over the past quarter-century, schools and school districts have become increasingly turbulent, pluralistic and unpredictable places to lead. On any given day, conflicting values, ideas, preferences, interests, needs, demands, problems and solutions descend upon the typical school leader from a shifting array of individuals and groups, each with…

The author's advice for for a school board superintendent is to assume incompetence instead of malevolence. Board members who behave inappropriately are a minority, and those with malicious intent are extremely rare. Most misbehaving board members act out of frustration. They may not understand the appropriate role of a board member.…

On a late March morning in the early 1990s, less than 2 1/2 months after he was forced to resign his tumultuous superintendency in a small Midwestern school district, Ed Evans took a shotgun into the woods and, using a spatula to push down the trigger, took his own life. His body was found by his teen-age son three days later. He had devoted…