Selecting, Preparing And Developing The School District Superintendent

David S.G. Carter, Thomas E. Glass, Shirley M. Hord

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780750701709
• eBook ISBN: 9781135395575
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Growing discontent with the performance of educational institutions is common in the USA today and little is being done to address the real problem - that of the need to reform and restructure the entire educational system. A key issue in this reform is the training and development of leaders in educational administration; as experienced "leaders" retire, so new professionals are called to assume the mantle of the "old hands" and vital new opportunities exist for those willing to take up the challenge.; This vitally practical text is about the selection, preparation and professional development of aspiring school leaders over the course of their careers, concentrating on ways to increase their overall effectiveness - particularly in changing times. It looks at changes that have been made and considers what can be adapted from existing systems in order to make radical improvements for those in leadership positions.; It is intended for use by postgraduate students in education, teacher trainings, heads of education faculties and teachers in leadership positions, school board members and aspirant superintendents.

Chapter 1

Smoke, Mirrors or Reality: Another Instructional Leader

Shirley M. Hord

The current interest in, and attention to, leadership appears to be unprecedented in this nation’s history. Not only is the analysis of corporate executive officers’ ‘leadership’ the focus of much of the television and other media coverage, but leadership at all levels is being recognized and publicly applauded: the high school sports team leader, the community’s women volunteer leaders, even 8-year-old cub scouts are singled out and valued for their demonstrated leadership. In this milieu educational leadership has not escaped attention. The surfeit of national commission reports are all clear in their demands for a new view of educational leadership that will solve current problems and bring new visions to address pressing societal concerns both now and for the future. There are those who believe that the role of the school, and of those leading the school, is tied inexorably to the common ‘good’, and that preparing young people to function successfully and to contribute maximally to an improved social order will benefit all citizens.

High-sounding rhetoric! Nonetheless, it is not over-dramatic to assert that the nation’s economic and cultural survival and hopes for the future ride in large measure on the shoulders of our schools, and thus inter alia, on the leadership of school superintendents. Such a relationship suggests a requirement for superintendents who are looking beyond buildings, buses, and bonds to students and instructional improvement. Thus, the superintendent’s priority attention is on the schools’ thirteen-year student ‘product’ and ‘consumer’, and on how each student is prepared to fit as an effectively functioning adult now and in tomorrow’s society. Some contend that such administrative leadership is a critical factor in effective schools. For example, Coleman (1986) maintains:

This component (administrative leadership) has emerged from virtually all the effective school studies as critical, even when the initial expectations did not include it as a factor. Any consideration of school district processes necessarily must include leadership as a primary linking mechanism. (p. 93)

What is bold leadership? While the concept is developed in Chapter 9 of this book, a simple definition characterizes leadership as guidance for movement from an existing to a preferred state. Assuming that to be the case, a vision of the preferred state is required, as are change strategies for inducing the organization to move toward the preferred state. What is known about superintendents operating in these modes? Not very much, but a knowledge base is evolving as is made clear in this chapter and elsewhere in this book. The role explication of the effective, improvement-oriented principal has been the focus of much study and consequently a burgeoning research base. Unlike the study of principals, disciplined inquiry into the superintendent’s effectiveness is still in its infancy (Hord, 1990; Muller, 1989); there is a lack of models to support such intellectual work. Can the instructional leader principal serve as a model prototype paralleling the role of the superintendent in this area?

Utilizing the emerging research base that examines superintendents’ problem-solving processes and roles in effective districts, this chapter explores the evolving literature and the underlying imperative of superintendents’ leadership both now and in the future.

The chapter is organized in three sections:

(i) the first provides a brief review of the chief education officer’s various publics and their current expectations for superintendent’s performance;

(ii) in the second section, the new findings emerging from research on effective superintendents are presented; two paradigms that portray the effective principal are introduced, and the ‘fit’ between superintendents’ findings and principals’ frameworks is explored;

(iii) finally, for increasing the effectiveness of instruction district-wide, the relationships between superintendents and principals are examined, noting the implications for the education of the school board and community and for the continuing professional development of superintendents.

Finances and Facilities vs. the Future

Depending on just who is responding, the role definitions of superintendents vary widely. Those who occupy the role adhere to differing definitions from those outside the office — school boards, school staff, and the public at large. The chief education officer is a resident in the ever-widening contexts of these constituents. How the latter perceive the role and what they value most about it can significantly influence the way it is exercised by incumbents, but let us look first at the CEO’s views.

The Superintendent Looks at Herself/Himself

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

Just what am I, after all?

Such might be the query of many superintendents currently active in the position. In a study to learn if gender influenced the superintendent’s view of his/her role (Youngs, 1988), it was discovered that half of the men and half of the women sampled viewed themselves as leaders, while the other 50 per cent of each group perceived themselves as managers. Furthermore, age was the factor that served to differentiate most between the different views across the study sample. Men and women under the age of 45 saw themselves as leaders while those over 45 viewed themselves as managers. Much attention and space has been given in the literature to differentiating management from leadership (see Chapter 9). Suffice it to note here that, as already suggested in the introductory passages, leadership can be thought of as entailing a visionary or symbolic dimension that addresses movement and change, while management is seen as securing an orderly status quo or the smooth operation of routines.

Additional studies addressing superintendents reported that aspects of their role identified as most important to them involved financial issues, building a positive climate to support and facilitate the work of staff and students, and an effective curriculum (Collier, 1987). How superintendents are influenced by self-perceptions of their careers and role(s) may be characterized by the place-bound and career-bound categories of superintendents: the place-bound superintendent, who does not see him/herself moving onward and upward or in leading the district forward, curbs change and maintains the status quo; the career bound or upwardly mobile superintendent, conversely, guides the system in new ways through the development and adaptation of new policies and practices (Crowson, 1987).

Given the disparate views of the role held by superintendents, it is not surprising that boards, also, differ among themselves and in contrast to the chief education officer. Of special significance is the influence the board can exercise on the superintendent’s role. Such divergent perceptions impact and create tensions when superintendent role perspectives compete with the board’s. It is instructive to consider, then, what views are characteristic of boards?

The Eye of the Board

One-hundred-and-fifty school board presidents representing districts of various size, geographic region, and amount of wealth, were studied by Pringle (1989), who found that board presidents agreed ‘skills considered most critical for selection and contract renewal . . . (were) those of providing information to board members and building a relationship of trust and respect with the board’ (p. vii). Other areas deemed important (beyond the boards’ self-interests) were those of professional staffing and evaluation, together with attention to the ways in which central office staff were organized. In Pringle’s study, board presidents were found to be less concerned about operations and auxiliary services, results that differ from other studies of boards and their views of the superintendent. Pringle reported that the literature available for review reflected priority roles for the superintendent in the areas of ‘finances, facilities, operations, personnel management, board relations and community relations’.

In contrast, narrative responses solicited in his study revealed that board presidents were also interested in the instructional-related abilities of superintendent-as-candidate and superintendent-as-incumbent. In a concurrent review of the literature, Hord (1990) also found boards’ interest in superintendents’ capabilities to manage finances and personnel to be a high priority consideration. At the same time, it appears that boards generally are not in agreement about the area and degree of the superintendent’s license to demonstrate leadership, thereby providing the potential for superintendent/board conflict (making it easy to understand why boards prefer superintendents who ‘build a relationship of trust and respect’). Alvey and Underwood (1985) described a ‘tug-of-war going on in many school systems (with) board members . . . and superintendents . . . each trying to edge more responsibility . . . especially concerning personnel’. Hentges (1986), however, reported a balance of power with the superintendent’s role predominating on internal policy issues where his/her professional technical expertise is of importance, and boards taking a stronger decision-making role in external policy issues.

And Others

The advent of politics and the emergence of militant action-oriented interest groups have significantly impacted the superintendent’s activities. The politics of community groups with particular interests to pursue, and the district’s influential professional staff associations and unions, have had a profound effect on policies and practices in some school systems. This ‘politicization’ of public education (Lupini, 1983) has resulted in more than the usual active involvement of board members and others, further complicating the superintendent’s role. How all these activities play out in the public press on a slow news day is easily observed.

On a more positive theme, there are some, like Tucker, who propose that superintendents adopt a role of managing people who think for a living as distinct from those who are just told what to do and expected to get on with it as directed (Tucker, 1988). With this view, Schlechty and Joslin (1986) maintain that knowledge work will be the most dominant occupation of our country, with teachers undertaking a decision-sharing role, requiring the redesign of authority relationships in a school system. In describing this new model, Schlechty and Joslin portray ‘the superintendent . . . as the chief teacher . . . who defines problems and inspires others to solve them. Leadership, then, is more important than managerial skill, though managerial skill is not to be discounted’.

In summary, school boards as instruments of public policy have articulated roles and expectations for their superintendents to perform in certain ways. In addition to the way superintendents and boards view the role, others outside or peripheral to the confines or restraints of the school system promote extensive lists of skills, tasks and responsibilities they consider should accrue to the superintendent’s role. The efforts of community interest groups and political action add further to the demands placed on the chief education officer for performance and accountability. In short, the modern superintendent is required to be all things to all people.

These multiple and frequently competing perspectives, role expectations, and demands do not bode well for the person in the ‘catbird’ seat. With mixed perceptions, an unrealistic array of expectations, and multiple role definitions abounding, it is not surprising that the art of politics has taken precedence over the craft of instruction in the superintendency. If instruction is to be accorded the highest priority by our schools, it would seem important at least to discover which role requirements of superintendents relate most powerfully to effective instruction — a topic to be examined in the next section.

Effective Leaders

There is an extensive research base on effective principals (Duttweiler and Hord, 1987) but a critical lack of much research-based knowledge about the effects that superintendents have on their districts that relates to student outcomes, the presumed focus of district programs. Wimpelberg (1988), Leithwood and Steinbach (1989), and others (Hord, 1990) have called attention to this fact, exhorting researchers to contribute to a much needed research base. Modestly and increasingly, study findings are accumulating, and though the quantity of results is still relatively small, they commonly exhibit a great potential to increase understanding about superintendents’ effects on instruction. See for example, Harris and Wan (1991) and Muller (1989).

Superintendents: Their Work in Effective Districts

Most of the recent studies reported here have gone beyond the short self report survey method and have employed multiple data collection techniques including interviews with subjects, colleagues, subordinates, and community members; examination of documents; ethnographic field studies to observe the subjects in situ and so on. Further, most of the subjects and samples studied have been identified on the basis of their effects on district policies and practices and, more specifically, on student academic outcomes. Such study samples, though small, stand in contrast to those selected on the basis of ‘reputation’ by persons not in direct contact with the district and its daily operations. The work of these subjects, superintendents in effective districts, has been examined and reported by several researchers and a brief review of their findings follows.

In a series of three reports of twelve effective districts, Hallinger, Murphy and Peterson (1985, 1986, 1987) provided clear information about the role of the superintendent in district effectiveness. According to Murphy and Hallinger (1986), the superintendents of these twelve effective districts were characterized as setting goals and establishing expectations and standards, selecting staff, supervising and evaluating staff, establishing an instructional and curricular focus, ensuring consistency in curriculum and instruction, and monitoring curriculum and instruction.

Some of the superintendents collected products of the schools’ work and used meetings of various sizes, formats, and composition to investigate implementation of instructional processes. They inspected curriculum and instruction in operation through visits to schools. Student achievement results were used in teacher and principal evaluations by two-thirds of the superintendents. They were, in a word, seen as being directly involved in the technical core operations of their districts (Murphy and Hallinger, 1986).

Murphy, Hallinger and Peterson’s paper (1985) added that the superintendents were also engaged in culture building: communicating with staff; developing team activities, showing concern, and building morale; and resolving problems, cutting through paperwork, and securing rapid solutions to pressing problems. They were the primary actors in linking schools and district offices, promoting closer relationships between district and site administrators, and mandating administrator staff development that focussed explicitly on curriculum and instruction. The superintendents’ message was ‘every child can learn’, and principals were expected to realize this ideal in practice (Murphy, et al., 1985).

Peterson, Murphy and Hallinger (1987) reported that superintendents in effective districts did not believe that ‘instructional technologies are totally idiosyncratic, evanescent and unspecifiable’ (p. 18); therefore, they specified instructional models and teaching methods to improve student learning outcomes. To ensure that instruction was attended to, they communicated the expectation that the identified models would be used. They established goals and standards for evaluation, and they put in place support structures through ongoing staff development activities and the allocation of budgets to support these initiatives. They signaled in powerful ways that curriculum and teaching were important (ibid.).

In comparing two small rural districts with similar communities, the characteristics and activities of the District B superintendent appeared to be significant to the district’s success (Jacobson, 1986). For example, to improve student performance, teachers’ performance was nurtured through professional development, and monitored. If teachers did not perform in accordance with expectations, they were dismissed, pressured into retirement, or denied tenure. In turn, teachers were supported in student achievement efforts through a strictly enforced code of student discipline by the administration. The improved student behavior contributed to improved teachers’ working conditions.

Teachers were encouraged to work collaboratively to address problems and to experiment with the curriculum. The superintendent regarded faculty as the agents of change and held them accountable for improvement. To facilitate this...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Acronyms
• Chapter 1 Smoke, Mirrors or Reality: Another Instructional Leader
• Chapter 2 Through the Looking Glass
• Chapter 3 Point and Counterpoint: What is in the Context of What Might Be?
• Chapter 4 Exemplary Superintendents: Do They Fit the Model?
• Chapter 5 Superintendent Selection and Success
• Chapter 6 Diagnosis, Self-prescription and Treatment
• Chapter 7 Assessment-based Models for Learning and Growth
• Chapter 8 Enter the Neophyte: Preparing Administrators for Leadership Roles
• Chapter 9 Leadership for Learning — Learning for Leadership
• Chapter 10 The Future: Mapping the Multisite Executive Development Center
• Appendix
• References
• Notes on Contributors
• Index