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Superintendency
Revisiting Why Superintendents Turn Over: Understanding Pathways Out of School District Leadership
Research has examined many facets of superintendent turnover but offers an incomplete understanding of superintendents’ pathways out of the role. We pair administrative data on Tennessee superintendents over 15 years with hand-collected information about the reported reasons for their departures… more →
Superintendent (In)Stability and Student Achievement in the United States
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Leadership, SuperintendencySuperintendents 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… more →
Deeper Roots Before the Storm: Utilizing Machine Learning to Alert School Districts of Permanent School Closures
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThe increasing rate of permanent school closures in U.S. public school districts presents unprecedented challenges for administrators and communities alike. This study develops an early-warning indicator model to predict mass closure events - defined as a district closing at least 10% of its… more →
The Politics of Pandemic School Operations for Reopening and Beyond: Evidence from Virginia
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernancePost COVID, is education losing its special status as a policy domain more insulated from partisan politics than other policy areas? Indeed, a community’s political makeup influenced its’ schools’ pandemic learning modality, but did it predict other aspects of educational operations? We study… more →
"Trial and error" and "trudging up a hill": Superintendents' beliefs about and engagement in state education policymaking
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Leadership, SuperintendencyThis mixed methods research study explores superintendents’ beliefs about and engagement in state education policymaking processes. Through interviews with 58 superintendents and a national survey of superintendents, I find that many superintendents feel that their voices have value in state… more →
Public-Sector Leadership and Venture Philanthropy: The Case of Broad Superintendents
Major philanthropic initiatives that incorporate features of venture-capital practices have become increasingly prominent, particularly in K-12 public education. In this study, we provide empirical evidence on the reach, character, and impact of the Broad Superintendents Academy, a prominent and… more →