State of the Superintendency
The Job's Reservations
School Administrator, January 2019


The leading factors giving pause to those pursuing their first superintendency are, in order, the job’s impact on family, the loss of job security and the politics of the job, according to a survey of 471 superintendents in New York state.

The effects on one’s family ranked highest by a considerable margin among those respondents who were in their first year on the job as well as those who had been superintendents between 11 and 20 years.

The largest number of superintendents who picked the politics of the job as their greatest reservation were those with between 8 and 10 years in the top post at the time of the survey.

SOURCE: “2017 Mini-Snapshot,” New York State Council of School Superintendents. Analysis by Robert Lowry. Full report available at www.nyscoss.org.