Survey of Attendance Practices
Category: Student Well-Being
Superintendents shape conditions for teaching and learning, yet the limited studies of their impact—concentrated in a few states and focused on superintendent turnover—find small or null effects on student achievement. Using more than 37,000 district-year records from national superintendents and student achievement datasets, and drawing on organizational learning and managerial succession theories, I reframe superintendent influence as a district’s cumulative leadership stability rather than a discrete turnover event. I find that districts with more instability had lower achievement, and the penalty grew with each additional departure. The penalty was larger when departures were contentious and concentrated in the highest-poverty districts. A within-district analysis of discrete turnover events yielded no reliable effects, underscoring that measurement shapes whether superintendents appear to matter.
Keywords
superintendents, leadership, achievement
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/zcw6-dg88
