Superintendent

Effective leadership is vital to the improvement of America’s public schools (Elmore & McLaughlin, 1988), and today, the public school superintendent is the most influential individual person in a school organization. A school superintendent is a school district’s lead administrator, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and lead educator. As accountability across different levels of education has increased (Hoyle, Bjork, & Glass, 2005), there has been a renewed interest in superintendent evaluation as a means of improving public schools (DiPaola & Stronge, 2001). Federal, state, and local mandates continually redefine and dictate changes in the job and focus of the school superintendent. The public school superintendents’ roles have changed drastically over the years, more specifically, since educational reform measures were put into place (Goodman & Zimmerman, 2000).