Superintendents spend most of their time dealing with finances, but few of them consider financial management to be one of their top strengths.
That mismatch, along with marked differences in the way male and female superintendents approach the job, is among the findings in a new survey of superintendents from across the country from AASA, The School Superintendents Association.
The survey highlights just how much money is top of mind for the leaders of the nation’s school districts.
Superintendents who took the survey said their districts’ financial situation had a significant influence over how they make decisions and whether they feel they can be effective leaders. Funding was also often cited as the biggest challenge facing their districts, and superintendents frequently said they want more professional learning about fiscal management.
“Because superintendents lead educational organizations, it might seem like common sense to infer that instruction and curriculum would take up most of their time,” said Ann LoBue, a senior policy analyst at the Black Education Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College and a contributor to the AASA report. “But, as the survey showed, it’s money that matters.”
The survey also explored differences between how men and women lead districts, the slowly growing gender parity in the superintendency, superintendents’ job satisfaction, their priorities, and how leaders spend the majority of their time.
The survey, conducted from Sept. 16-Oct. 18, 2024, included 1,095 responses from superintendents in 49 states. The report was released Dec. 4, during a webinar hosted by AASA to detail the findings.
The average superintendent was a married, white male, who was 52.7 years old with prior experience as a principal, with two to eight years of experience as a superintendent, according to the report.
Many of the findings from the AASA report align with and add to findings from other surveys and studies conducted in recent years on superintendents, though some add fresh insights into how district leaders navigate challenges, particularly those that affect their schools’ budgets.
Superintendents need more training about finances
The importance of financial stability surfaced repeatedly throughout the AASA survey.
Finance topped the list of issues on which superintendents spend the most time, while close to two-thirds of respondents indicated inadequate financing was one of the top five obstacles to their effectiveness. The financial condition of their district was cited by close to half of superintendents as one of the top three most influential factors in their decisionmaking, and funding was most often cited as the biggest problem facing their district. Money was also a top source of political conflict.
At the same time, only 17.8% chose fiscal management as one of their top three strengths, ranking seventh out of 16 choices.
Leadership preparation programs should take note of these findings and consider incorporating more practical finance-related lessons for leaders, said Rachel White, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin and a contributor to the AASA report.
Think courses on reading and building budgets, rather than more general lessons on understanding the economy, she said.
“Those general theories are really important, but I think what we need is really practical preparation for superintendents,” White said.
Despite challenges, most superintendents are happy with their jobs
Overall, superintendents reported the top five issues that consume most of their time were finance (54%), personnel management (44%), superintendent-school board relationships (41.1%), facility planning and management (40.9%), and conflict management (38.8%).
Superintendents in urban areas were much less likely than their rural counterparts to report concern with facilities and finance, likely because urban districts often have larger administrative teams among which tasks are distributed, said Christopher Tienken, an associate professor of leadership, management, and policy at Seton Hall University, and a contributor to AASA’s report.
Superintendents said the top five issues that inhibit their overall effectiveness were: inadequate financing of schools (62%), federal mandates (52%), significant demands on time (47%), social media (38.7%), and state politics (38%).
Despite the challenges, nearly 90% of superintendents said they are satisfied with their jobs, and about 60% said they plan to continue being a superintendent for the next five years.
Gap between men and women in superintendent positions is shrinking—slowly
While the early 2000s saw quick progress in closing the gap between men and women in the superintendency, women remain widely underrepresented in the role and face unique challenges in trying to get the job. Once in the role, women also face challenges their male counterparts don’t.
From 2000 to 2010, the proportion of female superintendents nearly doubled, increasing from 13.1% to 24.1%. Over the next 10 years, from 2010 to 2020, the proportion increased to 26.7%. In this year’s survey, 30.3% of survey respondents identified as female. That represents an increase of 3.6 percentage points since 2020. If the five-year trend continues, just over one-third of superintendents—about 34%—will be women by 2030, White said.
More than half of superintendents reported having fewer-than-anticipated children or no children. Two percent reported delaying having children.
While female superintendents comprised just under one-third of all superintendents, they comprised a greater share (32%) of those who reported spending less time with family and 44.9% of those having fewer or no children.
Men and women approach the superintendent’s job differently
Women were more likely than men to have ascended to their roles as internal hires, meaning they were already employed by the district and were promoted to superintendent. Just over a third of all survey respondents (almost 38%) said they were internal candidates for their current superintendent position—about 44% of women and 35% of men, when broken down by gender.
Women also tended to have more classroom teaching experience than their male counterparts. About a quarter of female superintendents had 13 or more years of classroom teaching experience, compared with 15% of male superintendents.
“On the other side of the coin, about 18% of male superintendents reached the superintendency with just two to four years of teaching experience, while only 9% of female superintendents had this little teaching experience,” White said.
There were also differences in how men and women approach the job and view their responsibilities.
Men tended to emphasize the importance of positioning themselves as the visible, public face of the district, the report said, while women prioritized building positive district and school climates.
Men were also far more likely to say their district’s administrative team had the strongest influence on their decisions, while women were more likely to say school board members and the broader community were most influential in shaping their decisions.
“I think sometimes we may look at the superintendent as an inanimate object and think that they all work the same way, they all lead the same way,” Tienken said. “But there are aspects and differences about the way that they go about their work.”
School law courses were the most relevant to their work, superintendents say
When asked what courses in their leadership preparation programs were most relevant to their jobs, superintendents most often selected school law (67%), followed by school finance (62%), leadership theory or leadership research (57%), human resources or personnel management (43%), and public relations (31%).
Coursework in school finance was widely considered highly relevant to the role, and finance and business planning were among the top areas in which superintendents wanted to pursue more professional development.
Men were more likely to highlight finance as consuming their attention, whereas women placed greater weight on the relational and cultural aspects of leadership—though they were also focused on financial management.
