Purpose: In the wake of school board protests nationwide, it is essential for educational leaders, policymakers, and researchers to understand locally controlled educational governance. The stability of educational districts depends on superintendents navigating relationships with their school boards, yet little research exists that addresses…

Do school district central offices and school principals have the same level of influence on school decisions? What does the district-principal power relationship look like? These two questions are discussed but are rarely examined in the literature. Based on a nationally representative sample from the 2007-2008 Schools and Staffing Survey data,…

Purpose: This article examines factors that affect school board policy making about student diversity within two southern urban-suburban school districts experiencing changing demographics: Jefferson County Public Schools and the Wake County Public School System. Both districts have a history of voluntary integration efforts, and research shows…

Over time, the role definitions of novice school board members do not converge toward those of the administrators sampled, but rather toward those of experienced members. New board members are socialized in the preincumbency period rather than after they take office. (Author/IRT)

Explores compensation practices fundamental to the school board/employee exchange relationship, using a sample of 615 midwestern superintendents. Employs an organizational justice model, focusing on its procedural and distributive dimensions. Explores procedural justice via market-rate earnings equations and distributive justice by examining…

Reviews 50 years of superintendency literature. Offers a possible reconciliation of the superintendency by juxtaposing the traditional with ideas from feminist and postmodern literature. Recognizing postmodern paradoxes allows questioning of the traditional superintendency and leads to more caring, socially committed leadership strategies.…

Observation of a sample of 24 Chicago (Illinois) principals for a period of 11 working days each, spread over the course of 1 to 2 school years, revealed evidence of an organizational loyalty/identification system and a training-oriented relationship between the principal and the district superintendent. (MLF)

Two key elements define the stability of the relationship between the school board and the superintendent and of the governance structure--vulnerability, the existence of, or lack of, checks and balances in the structure, and consensus, the agreement or lack of agreement on governance pattern and system goals. (Author/IRT)

Concurrent case studies of consensus formation and maintenance in school district governance in six New York districts yielded eight critical variables, including environmental constraints, community interest group mobilization, school board and administrator unity, administrative expertise, superintendents' leadership abilities, teacher…

Examines two reform efforts that indicate promising strategies for changing and improving urban school district decision- and policy-making systems, particularly as those systems reflect the relationships among boards of education, school superintendents, and the school district bureaucracy. (Author/IRT)

Considers knowledge about location and contexts of men's and women's superintendencies, along with the authors' own recent research on former women superintendents. Women are likely to occupy superintendencies in the smallest, least cosmopolitan districts with the fewest central-office administrators, declining enrollments, more reported job…

Discusses the nature of recent calls for educational reform in the context of the historical role of superintendents in the development of the public school movement. Provides a case study illustrating how one metropolitan school superintendent facilitated educational innovation and solidified his own organizational power within his district. (34…