Destined to rule the schools
Subtitle: women and the superintendency, 1873-1995
By: Jackie M. Blount.
Series: SUNY series, educational leadership; SUNY series in educational leadership.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Albany
Language: eng
Number of pages: 244
Subjects: Women school superintendents -- United States -- History.; School management and organization -- United States -- History.
Description: In 1909, when she became the superintendent of the Chicago schools, Ella Flagg Young proclaimed that women were "destined to rule the schools of every city." After all, women accounted for nearly eighty percent of all teachers by 1910 and their ascendance into formal school leadership positions could not be far behind.

After World War II, however, a backlash against single women educators and a rigid realignment of gender roles in schools contributed to a rapid decline of women school administrators across the country, a decline from which there has been little recovery to the present.

Destined to Rule the Schools tells the story of women and school leadership in America from the common school era to the present. In a broad sense, it offers an historical account of how teaching became women's work and the school superintendency men's. Blount explores how power in school employment has been structured unequally by gender.

It focuses on the superintendency because an important component of the effort to establish control of schools has occurred in contesting the definition of this position.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [203]-236) and index.