Superintendency

Over the past one-and-a-half centuries, superintendents have been the persons vested with the greatest individual responsibility for the welfare of local, intermediate, and state school systems. Their jobs have required managing the political complexities of taxsupported institutions, facilitating intensely bureaucratic processes, possessing keen wisdom and understanding of intertwined social subcultures that comprise school communities, providing leadership for the persons who work and study in schools, and demonstrating expertise in curricular and instructional matters. In short, the demands of the job have been staggeringly complex. That complexity likely will increase into the future.

Not only have the demands of the work shifted, but the path to the superintendency has changed sharply since the first superintendents assumed their duties in the mid-1800s. During these early years, schoolmasters with little professional experience or preparation could be tapped for the work, particularly in small, rural districts. In contrast, the persons who become superintendents now have served as teachers for an average of 6 or 7 years before moving into their first administrative positions, typically principalships or assistant principalships. Those who work in large districts usually move into central office positions before finally assuming the superintendency. In smaller districts, individuals tend to leap directly from principalships/assistant principalships to superintendencies. Before assuming superintendencies today, administrative aspirants typically engage in extensive graduate study to obtain advanced administrative credentials. Another important change in the path to the superintendency is that the promotional path used to wind through the aspirant's home district. Currently, however, over two thirds of superintendents have been hired from outside their current districts.

Despite changes such as these, the demographic characteristics of superintendents as a group have remained remarkably stable over time. Men have held between 87% and 97% of all superintendencies during the twentieth century. Nearly all male superintendents have been married. Though accurate historical data describing the number of persons of color holding superintendencies does not exist, persons of color probably have accounted for no more than 1% of all superintendents at any given time. And most superintendents have been middle-aged. Some of this demographic data has been collected on a semiregular basis first by the Department of Superintendence of the National Education Association (NEA), then later by the American Association of School Administrators (AASA). It is worth noting that the demographic homogeneity of superintendents today stands in stark contrast with the evergrowing diversity of school communities.

The matter of who serves as superintendent may be shifting subtly during the early years of the twentyfirst century, however. For example, the proportions of women and persons of color in the position are growing in some regions such as the Northeast and South. The range of acceptable leadership styles may be expanding as well. The nature of the work itself has changed along with technologies facilitating internal communication, curriculum and instruction, information management, testing and measurement, and public relations. Future directions for the superintendency no doubt will be grounded both in how the position has evolved as well as emerging social conditions.

School superintendents and supervisors first served in urban areas when women began teaching in large numbers during the mid-1800s. Because men were chosen for these administrative positions, some observers conclude that sex segregation was part of the design of schoolwork. School board members believed that male administrators assured female teachers' safety, especially from the threat supposedly posed by adolescent male students. The presence of male administrators in schools and districts also preserved a gender symmetry that typically existed in White, middle-class homes with male heads of household who represented family interests to the community and women minding domestic affairs while submitting to male authority. The substantially higher salaries required for newly created district administrative positions were funded through savings achieved by hiring relatively less expensive women teachers.

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