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

School Administrator, June, 2001 by Jay Mathews

Betty Morgan in Baltimore has worked for four superintendents or CEOs in the last five years, first as an associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction and then as chief academic officer. She said in one respect the jobs are the same because whatever her bosses' titles, they have not always had the time to become deeply involved in issues of learning and teaching.

"Many boards of education still suffer from the delusion that the superintendent should be the instructional leader of the system," she says. "I think that's a fallacy. Do we expect the chief hospital administrator to teach the medical interns or operate on a patient? Now, certainly it helps if that person is a doctor, but I wouldn't want him/her to be operating on my brain! It is good enough, in my opinion, if the superintendent/CEO is an excellent fiscal and human manager and provides good leadership so specialists, like myself, can perform their jobs at optimum level. The CEO is really too busy in a large school system and should be too busy to also be the chief education leader and we've got to realize this and bless the separation of duties."

David Johnson, the former CAO in East Allen County, Ind., says Abbott, his superintendent, often indicated he was "generally consumed with political matters. On matters of operations and academics, while he might know his preferred outcome, he generally deferred to others." Abbott says his focus was on board and community relations and managing the central-office staff and that it would be more accurate to say he delegated authority, rather than deferred to staff.

For CAOs to operate effectively, they have to be confident in their administrative abilities and expertise in the financial and operational issues that affect learning. Cozette Buckney, the chief educational officer and No. 2 administrator for the Chicago Public Schools, was a former principal with extensive experience at school headquarters when she was picked by the nontraditional chief executive officer, Paul Vallas, to be the chief administrator for academics, Chicago's version of a CAO.

She said she liked the power the new title and new responsibilities convey to her. "The more authority that you have, the more responsibility you have to get things done, the better opportunity you have to accomplish that," she says.

As a key player in the transition to Chicago's new administrative setup, Buckney says she learned about "scan charts and backward planning" and several other business practices that have been useful to her in her new role.

Title Adjustments

Some CAOs don't see much difference between their duties under their new title and those of an assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. Art Johnson, the former CAO in Palm Beach County, Fla., says it's "very similar. ... However, the separation from the business activities of the district is much more sharply distinguished. Our CAO is pure academic."

Sometimes the title is adjusted for political and personal reasons. In 1999 the Michigan state legislature approved a restructuring of the Detroit school district that included the creation of a position of CEO and a chief academic officer, the title used in the bill. But when the new CEO, Kenneth S. Burnley, named Kay Royster to the job, he gave her the title of deputy CEO, curriculum and instruction.