Chief Academic Officers - hiring of professional educators as deputy school superintendents

School Administrator, June, 2001 by Jay Mathews

The emergence of a focused No. 2 post brings a new dynamic to the central office

Elizabeth "Betty" Morgan, a veteran Maryland educator working in Frederick County, three years ago saw the advertisement for a new position in the Baltimore city schools. The school system was looking for a chief academic officer, someone to serve as the No. 2 person in the district, reporting to a new chief executive officer, Robert Booker, whose background as an accountant required the support of an educational professional.

Morgan liked the idea of a responsible position in a big city school system. But she didn't like the title, at least nor at first. School leaders with her experience, she says, "usually want to have 'superintendent' in their title for their resume and future job opportunities." Also, she says, "I didn't really understand at that time what a CAO is and should be."

She was not alone. When the Maryland state senate passed Senate Bill 795, its decision to establish a chief academic officer in Baltimore was unusual and often misunderstood. The state was deeply involving itself in the reorganization and revival of the low-performing Baltimore schools. This was, in effect, a reaction to an even more radical change in educational governance, the decision by many struggling urban districts to hire superintendents from business, law or the military who never had taught a public school class, much less run a school system.

The nation's three largest school systems, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, now all have nontraditional superintendents or chief executive officers. Many experts expect their numbers to grow, both because school boards are prone to follow administrative fashion and because the growing demand for improved school performance seems to require more political and administrative skills than many long-time educators possess.

That in turn means more CAOs, or at least more veteran educators in No. 2 administrative jobs with more responsibility and higher salaries than are usually attached to deputy superintendent positions.

An Interpreter's Role

A new dynamic is coming to school district headquarters. In the past, superintendents and their chief deputies usually had much in common. They all looked back on early days as teachers and principals. They generally agreed on the right approach to dealing with parents, students and school board members.

The introduction of nontraditional superintendents means school chiefs are more likely to think of themselves as men from Mars, full of new and potentially powerful ideas but handicapped by an inability to speak the local language. Their CAO then becomes not only chief deputy but also interpreter, someone on whom they must rely to communicate with the rest of the staff. This gives the position unusual power, experts say, and requires even more diplomatic and administrative talent than is usually found in deputy superintendents.

"These new, nontraditional superintendents often recognize that if they are to exercise leadership with their teachers, they must compensate for the fact that they do not know curriculum and instruction," says Susan Moore Johnson, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "In appointing CAOs ... they convey to staff and the public their instructional priorities."

When this trend began, Morgan recalls, "there was a perception that public education was in decline. Test scores were falling nationally and the local business communities everywhere were being very critical of public education."

Not only did the former corporate executives and generals who were becoming superintendents need veteran educators working closely with them, but the results-conscious school boards that had appointed them wanted new educational titles to reflect the corporate structure they hoped to impose on the failed education bureaucracy.

"These titles came about to make education look more business-like." Morgan says. The CEO title approved by the Maryland legislature, she adds, was to "signal it's a new day in Baltimore City."

The resulting realignments of responsibilities in school districts took many forms, but usually fed on the feeling that no-nonsense business executives or military officers could succeed where administrators with education degrees could not. David E. Johnson, until recently the CAO for the 10,000-student East Allen County, Ind., schools, says his superintendent, Jeff H. Abbott, was a lawyer-educator (he had experience in both law and school offices) who exemplified the nontraditional superintendent's interest in reforming the way school districts are structured.

Abbott says he thought changing titles would help the business community better understand the school district's administrative structure, but the primary reason for the change was "to focus our organization on academics."

A Model Assistant

No educator holding a CAO-type position has received more favorable publicity or been more often cited as a model for the new breed of administrator than Anthony J. Alvarado, the chancellor of instruction for the San Diego Public Schools. Alvarado was appointed by one of the most unusual of the new nontraditional superintendents, Alan D. Bersin. When named to the job in 1998, Bersin was neither a businessman nor a general but the U.S. attorney for San Diego, a professional crime fighter.