Outside the ropes: superintendents from business and the military learn about system leadership informally and in seminars

School Administrator, Nov, 2004 by Scott LaFee

If there's one thing you can say about nontraditional superintendents--the men and women of business, government and the military who leave those fields to become school system leaders--it's that they never take the easy job.

"School districts tend to look outside for a superintendent only when things have gotten so bad that doing the same old thing just doesn't feel like it's going to work," says Thomas Vander Ark, executive director of education and scholarship programs for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and a former businessman-turned-superintendent in Federal Way, Wash., from 1994 through 1999.

"That's when boards start looking at alternative sources for a new superintendent, someone who will generally come into a job embraced by all manner of unreasonable expectations." And why not?

Nontraditional superintendents are, almost by definition, great achievers--at least based on their resumes in industry, politics or the military. These are people who have founded or run successful companies. They have been elected to public office. They are, in the words of Gilbert and Sullivan, "the very model of a modern Major-General."

"That's not to say they don't come into their new jobs as superintendents without considerable trepidation," says Don McAdams, president of the Center for Reform of School Systems in Houston. "They know they're going into something outside their experience base. They know it's going to be tough. But they also think they can do it. They think they have something to offer."

Complex Challenges

To be sure, most superintendents work their way up through the system. They begin as teachers, become principals and get promoted to the central office where they tackle ever-larger management roles. That's the traditional route.

Nontraditional superintendents are a decided minority, though an expanding one. They work in all types of school districts, though most tend to receive appointments in larger, more urban systems.

"When school boards start looking at nontraditional superintendents, they're looking for fundamental change," says McAdams, who formerly served on the school board in Houston. "They're saying that they don't believe that there's just one system or way of doing things."

Such thinking is fairly common in big urban districts, where the issues are not merely myriad and confoundingly complex but also attain scales unseen in smaller districts.

"You've got to remember a lot of urban districts are dysfunctional, low-performing. They need and want to change," McAdams says. "Many suburban districts, on the other hand, are pretty much well-oiled machines. Things work. That doesn't mean they don't have problems, but their problems are smaller. Big districts have big problems."

A smaller district wrestling with the routine crises of education--making sure there are enough textbooks, that the buses run on time, that students with significant disabilities receive appropriate placements, that student performance meets the new federal standards of progress--isn't going to venture far into the unknown for a new superintendent. It doesn't need to and wouldn't want to for practical reasons.

"Smaller districts have smaller management teams," McAdams says. "A superintendent must handle more of the nitty-gritty. He or she is more engaged in a fuller range of activities than a superintendent in a big district. A nontraditional superintendent coming in from, say, a big corporation, would have little or no knowledge about the finer points of running a small school district and there would be no one to turn to for help. Large districts have experts in every imaginable field: facilities, accounting, contracts, curriculum. In a small district, the superintendent probably wears most of those hats."

Training Programs

Traditional and nontraditional superintendents do share at least one thing, says Tim Quinn, managing director of the Broad Urban Superintendents Academy, a rigorous, 10-month training program for public school chief executives. About half of the program's participants over the past three years have come from non-education fields.

"It's the qualities of leadership. Both kinds know how to lead," says Quinn, who also heads the Michigan Leadership Institute, a private corporation that promotes professional development of leaders for school districts and other public service organizations. The Urban Superintendents Academy is funded by the Broad Center for Management of School Systems, part of the Los Angeles-based Broad Foundation.

"The thing nontraditional superintendents don't have coming into their jobs is history, a knowledge of all of the things that can and cannot be done. As a result, they take a fresh approach. They don't accept that things can't be done because they come from worlds where things do get done, where excuses aren't accepted. Whether in reality all things are possible, I don't know. Reality is probably different from what they expected."

That's a fact new nontraditional superintendents learn fast.