The Invisible CEO

School Administrator, May, 1999

A new report, The U.S. School Superintendent in 1998: The Invisible CEO, portrays an alarming lack of diversity in the superintendent ranks, even though the candidate pipeline shows much diversity in gender and race.

Funded by the Ford Foundation with AASA as a collaborator, the report is based on two surveys of state-level school executives.

Findings include:

* Only 5 percent of superintendents today are minorities, and only 12 percent are women;

* Less than half of the superintendents today are in their first superintendency; and

* The averages for shortest and longest tenures as reported by the state executives is 1.3 years and 24.5 years, respectively.

Among its recommendations, the report suggests that the National Center for Education Statistics begin to collect and report on superintendents.