Some superintendents, for example, figure that showering the district with reforms will eventually produce improved student performance. Such superintendents reorganize the central office, introduce charter schools, press for more phonics in the primary grades, and urge teachers to try the New Math. Other school chiefs size up the situation as basically unfathomable. The lack of research on the linkages between superintendent actions and student outcomes prompts working administrators to rely on personal cause-effect models of success while keeping their fingers crossed behind their backs. All of these dilemmas have persisted for decades.
None are new.
I have already suggested that they are in the DNA of the job, the conflicting purposes of public schooling, and spasms of reform. But DNA is a metaphor, and I speak of organizations, not the human body. Such thinking has occurred in the past. Such solutions will ultimately fail because these durable dilemmas are anchored in the goals of schooling, administrative roles, inflated expectations of those who hire superintendents, and core myths that surround this demanding job. The dilemmas may be unsolvable, but they can be better managed.