Leadership in the Want Ads.

What you can learn about the new realities of the superintendency from job postings

One can discover a great deal about a profession from reading the job vacancy advertisements. In the case of the superintendency, position descriptions in newspaper and magazine classifieds and online job postings offer a rich mine of insight and information.

The want ads can tell us how educational leadership is perceived today and how it is promoted. Emerging changes in the field may surface first in employment postings.

One obvious new development is the greater willingness of boards of education to consider candidates who do not come from educational backgrounds or experience. Nearly two dozen school systems have been run or now are led by professionals from law, the business world or the military. When large districts today advertise their superintendent vacancy, you can almost count on their promotion crafted to seek a corporate-style CEO. After a long and difficult search last year, the Los Angeles Unified School District settled on an ex-governor.

Meanwhile, New York City and about a dozen other districts have split the job into two by creating a chief academic officer (known alternatively as chancellor of instruction or chief education officer) to oversee all matters relating to instruction and curriculum in ways that supercede the traditional deputy superintendency. In some communities, for-profit educational management firms, such as Edison, employ educational administrators whose M.B.A.s are considered an acceptable substitute for the M.Ed. or M.A.

Another new trend has to do with economics. Administrative salaries, often too close to those of the best-paid teachers, are going up especially as the law of supply and demand takes hold on the one hand and because of the greater salary expectations of M.B.A.s and CEOs on the other. The traditional opposition to using business leaders and employing management approaches may be lessening, though, as Edison and other management companies forge new relationships with public school administrators.

Common Profile

Clearly, we are entering uncharted waters with respect to the future of educational administrators. It might be helpful to examine what districts say they want and expect from their educational leaders. What appears below is an examination of a comprehensive sample of advertisements for superintendents from Education Week and from association journals.

The basic candidate profile of superintendents that emerges takes the form of five major categories in descending order of importance: leadership, management skills, school performance and reform, curricular and staff development and technological literacy.

* Leadership. This is typically presented in Help Wanted ads as a calling, while management is portrayed as a task. The one occupies the high road, the other that of mundane day-to-day operations. In any case, here are the quoted leadership qualities that are sought: "Exceptional leadership"; "Visionary of the future"; "Strong and energetic leader"; "Proven record of accomplishment"; "Passionate educator"; "Strong moral character and high level of energy"; "Servant leader"; and "Accessible, visible, honest and firm."

One has the uneasy feeling that some of these qualifications may have been crafted as correctives to what the last incumbent failed to do. But what is curious is that no descriptions include what would be prominent in business job descriptions--decisiveness. The frequent mention of the need for high energy conveys the impression of a non-stop job in which the holder of the office who can outlast his crushing schedule will remain a leader--a kind of trial by exhaustion. But what emerges clearly is that the superintendent must pursue the high road, inspire followers and implement his vision. At the same time, he also must run a tight ship and possess the management skills enumerated below.

* Management skills. In almost all cases, the management area reads like the typical duties of a CEO and not that of an educational leader. The extensive list includes these references: "Manage a large and complex organization"; "Faculty planning, recruitment and retention"; "Financial planning, budget and oversight"; "Strong implementation skills"; "Comprehensive fiscal and performance accountability"; "Developing new initiatives"; "Continuous quality improvement"; "Diversity management"; and "Communication and interpersonal skills."

Perhaps one reason the tenure of superintendents has shrunk to its present range of less than three years for urban districts may be the combined expectation of being both an educational leader and a business manager at the same time. Although clearly it is not impossible to integrate the two halves, the combination may be unmanageable or manageable only by minimizing one half of the dual role, usually the leadership half.

Is this why New York City, Chicago and San Diego, among others, have essentially split the position into two jobs? Have the expectations of the superintendency become too much for one person? Some superintendents are better suited for handling one piece or the other. Moreover, the ante is being upped on both sides of the street. Statewide reforms and performance accountability measures have pushed academic leaders to the wall, and costs of teacher salaries and benefits and now performance incentives have strained local financial resources and the capacities of managers.

The daily crush of operations and oversight and the grueling routine of meeting after meeting create a no man s land that consumes or fragments high-level leadership and operations management. The high-energy demands call for a superintendent who is perpetually in motion, working 14-16 hours a day moving paper off a desk, attending meetings often dealing with administrivia and finally offering some inspiring words at a community forum.

* School reform and performance. Surely, this area alone has stretched the energy and endurance of superintendents and made the job twice as taxing and time consuming. Just look at the following agenda items mentioned in ads: "Mandated state performance standards"; "Testing goals"; "Student-focused curricular"; "Parental and community involvement"; "Continuous reform and quality initiatives"; and "High morale and performance."

What is surprising given the high priority of school reform and performance is that school boards do not provide the budget for a new superintendent to hire an assistant in charge of just this area alone, it probably also would provide the best training an aspiring superintendent could have for the top job.

Driven by Nostalgia

* Curricular review and faculty recruitment and retention. Here we deal with the role of the superintendent as an instructional leader whose educational expertise is probably stretched to unmanageable limits by the following: "Awareness of recent research"; "Literacy standards"; "Homework judiciously assigned"; "Team teaching"; "Grade-level planning"; and "Board involvement as community representative.

Typically this laundry list is compiled by the school board. Its function is to hold the superintendent accountable for everything that can go wrong and for setting up the game of "gotcha" that burns out so many superintendents and accounts for high turnover.

School boards can be dreadful bosses. For some board members, it is a full-time passion. They thrive on excesses and micromanage. Their not-so-hidden agenda is their own school experiences, good and bad. Nostalgia becomes data. They often possess an unfortunate tendency to lecture others about the good old days, the point of which is always to convey the impression of how strong and committed they and/or their parents were.

School boards are the most politicized aspects of the school system, especially if their meetings are aired regularly on community TV. Board members may appear at meetings ready to wave newspaper and magazine clippings dealing with various panaceas touted by schools elsewhere. They'll ask indignantly: "Why can't we do this?" And the poor superintendent, probably going on four hours sleep, has to once again perform a weary dance: "We can't do everything and do it well."

* Technology. Unfortunately, this dimension is often presented as an add-on or last-minute tag to advertise that the district is looking ahead and not just back. The common phrases: "Computer literacy"; "Knowledge of electronic curricula"; "Computer-aided instruction"; "Distance education modalities"; and "Electronic AP courses."

Curiously, only two position descriptions of 30 asked for technological literacy and the integration of technology into the curriculum or sought familiarity with these concepts. It is a strange sin of omission given the prospect that the economics of schooling may force, not through enlightenment but through necessity, the cost savings of electronic instruction.

Oddly, the only job advertisements offering prospective applicants further information through Web sites or e-mail inquiries involved professional recruiting and consulting firms. These firms also frequently market the location and not just the position, especially where it appears to be an inducement.

A Crushing Burden

So what is the upshot? We seem to be engaged in perpetuating the mythology of the super-superintendent. Have we doomed our leaders to failure by nailing their operational feet to the ground, asking them to run ahead of the pack and ascending the high road of educational excellence? Or conversely and perversely, have we compromised their managerial competency by also demanding visionary foresight? As if that were not bad enough, when one adds all that is left out or omitted from the Help Wanted ads, the burden is crushing.

School reform may have to start with leadership reform. We need to allow our superintendents to succeed. But that can't happen if, from the start, we overwhelm or deceive them. Why should educational leaders constantly be made to go up a down escalator? Are we trying to prove that educational martyrdom is mandated?

Leadership does not have to become less of a calling if the leader is protected and supported. Must it be a thankless job in which burnout and ultimately insensitivity are guaranteed? Perhaps school boards should be rewriting the position descriptions they post for their vacancies. That might be a good place to start. Another good place is with the calendar and planning book of the departing superintendent.

Irving Buchen is a professor of management and communication in the distance education doctoral program of Walden University.