CEOs, Ex-military, and Lawyers Heading School Districts, Part 2

This photo is of Lt. General Julius W. Becton,...

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1. Where do non-educator superintendents serve?

Lawyers Harold Levy and Joel Klein served as Chancellors in New York City. Publishing executive Cathie Black just replaced Klein. Paul Vallas, former budget chief for Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, headed those schools. Colorado governor Roy Romer went to Los Angeles. Generals John Stanford in Seattle and Julius Becton in Washington, D.C. confirm that nearly all non-educator superintendents serve in big cities. Few small town, suburban, or rural districts have sought non-educator superintendents.








These assumptions added up to a market-based prescription for all public schools (not just urban ones). Since the late 1990s, Presidents and governors from both political parties have moved swiftly to establish curricular standards, impose tests, and hold teachers and administrators responsible for student outcomes.

This business-driven rationale has become the basis for picking urban district leaders. And the lingo: superintendents and principals became CEOs. The theory assumes that big companies are just like school systems but that corporate leaders are better managers than educators. If you climbed the educator career ladder, the theory goes, your prior experiences unfit you to manage thousands of employees, oversee multi-million dollar budgets or make hard decisions. You simply lack the managerial toughness of leaders who had to meet an unrelenting bottom line. If you were a corporate attorney for CitiCorp, you can run the district and improve student achievement.

4. How are non-educators superintendents supposed to improve teaching and learning?





So, the question is: in a big city school system, how can one non-educator superintendent–having to perform managerial, political, and instructional duties–reach into thousands of classrooms to improve teaching and learning?



While there are dueling studies from researchers on whether mayorally-appointed non-educator superintendents have raised test scores, see here and here, the policy-to-practice chain that stretches from the Chancellor’s office to a first grade teacher’s classroom is very long with many links. Superintendents can create district learning climates–one link– where principals and teachers are inspired, supported, and pressed to do well in their schools and classrooms. Such district cultures can influence test scores indirectly but these cultures are hard to develop and sustain, particularly if superintendents exit after a few years.




Filed under leadership, Reforming schools

4 responses to “CEOs, Ex-military, and Lawyers Heading School Districts, Part 2

  1. larrycuban

    For a rebuttal to the points that I make in the last two posts, see Tom Vander Ark, a non-educator who became a superintendent in the state of Washington at:

  2. Steve Davis

    Conflicts of interest are starting to emerge as an unintended consequence of CEO and business model infiltration into public schools.

  3. Pingback: edReformer: Leadership by Any Means

  4. Pingback: The modern superintendent | Hechinger Report

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