S05E10 - The Superintendent Lab | Dr. Rachel White, University of Texas at Austin - Build Momentum for Education - K-12 Superintendent Series

Episode Transcript
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Sarah Williamson (00:05):
Hello and welcome to Build Momentum for
Education, a Podcast where weexplore thought leadership in
Education. I'm Sarah Williamson,the founder of SWPR Group, an
agency that supports publicrelations, communication
strategies and thoughtleadership support for school
districts, education companiesand nonprofit organizations.

Chad Bolser (00:23):
And I'm Chad Bolser, Chancellor at Ivy Tech
Community College in Indiana.
This season, we explore aparticularly unique perspective
in K 12 thought leadership,humanizing the role of the
superintendent.

Throughout the many conversations we continue
to have with superintendents, aclear theme has emerged about
the need to bring more humanityinto the role of the
superintendency. In this specialseries, we interview current and
former superintendents andresearchers to pursue the core
question, how can we better seesuperintendents as real people
navigating complex challenges toprovide the best possible

(00:56):
education for K 12 students?

We dig deeper into how this important work can help
build community, invitecollaboration and increase
widespread engagement.

We can't wait to get started. So let's dive
in. We're so fortunate today tohave Rachel White, the Associate
Professor of EducationalLeadership and Policy at the
University of Texas at Austin onthe show with us. She's also the
founder of the SuperintendentLab. Welcome Rachel.

Rachel White (01:26):
Thank you for having me.

Yes, we're really excited to get into some
data today. Would you mindsharing that you're doing,
particularly with theSuperintendent lab, and why
you're focusing so much onsuperintendents these days?

Sure, yeah. So I'll start with the second half
of the question on why I startedfocusing on them. So I was a
former policy analyst with theMichigan Association of School
Administrators, and workedreally closely with
superintendents across thestate. Just anytime a new state
policy was coming down thepipeline. And what I saw very
quickly in that role was thatsuperintendents had a really big
impact on what was happening inschools through their political

(02:04):
advocacy work at the statehouse. And so I was getting my
PhD at the time, working sometime there, and I just felt like
in the world of higher ED andleadership, we weren't paying a
whole lot of attention totraining and supporting
superintendents. So ended upstarting some research looking
at superintendents engagement instate policy spaces, and that

(02:26):
led me to build the NationalLongitudinal Superintendent
Database. It kind of got builtby accident. I thought that the
US Department of Education hadsome spreadsheet I could just
download with all of thesuperintendents names and email
addresses, and I quickly learnedthat that didn't exist. And so
for that project, I actuallywent state by state, and in most
cases, district by district, andhand collected every

(02:48):
superintendent's name so thatway I could administer a survey,
and then I did 50 plusinterviews with superintendents
across the US. And so it wasreally through that project that
led to the Superintendent Lab,which really at its very core,
is also the home of the NationalLongitudinal Superintendent
Database, which is now six yearsold, almost. So we have around,

(03:09):
oh gosh, I'm gonna get thiswrong. I think it's around
68,000 superintendent year datapoints. So we're able to do some
really cool stuff aroundsuperintendent attrition and
mobility. The only data set thatallows us to look at mobility
across state lines, and we canlook at variations based on
gender. We're incorporating raceinto the data set this year and

(03:29):
things like that. So that hasreally what drove me was my
personal experience seeing theimpact that superintendents
have, and then being in theworld of higher ed and being
like, no one's paying attentionto this. And then also after
that, I was a School BoardMember and became School Board
Vice President, and that wasduring COVID, and just saw how
quickly things were changing interms of the work of the

(03:52):
superintendency and the reallyunique challenges that they were
facing. And I just wanted tosort of double down and really
focus in and doing research thathopefully can support better,
healthier, more humanizing workenvironments for
superintendents.

Well, first of all, thank you for all of that work.
That's amazing stuff, but thankyou for being a school board
member that is a thanklessposition that only the brave get
involved in. But my questionhere is, throughout this podcast
series, we've been looking atexploring the question, how do

(04:26):
you humanize thesuperintendency? So have you
considered, and I heard you say,a little bit of this, that
perspective in any of yourresearch?

Yeah. So I think the most blatant way that I do
that as a researcher is that wehave the NLSD, the National
Longitudinal SuperintendentDatabase. And I really I have,
oh gosh, six or sevenundergraduates that work with me
in the lab, helping collectdata, clean data, analyze data,

(04:54):
and we go through a wholetraining process at the
beginning. And I really talkabout how every single line in
this data is a person. It's ahuman being that has feelings,
that often has families, andthat wakes up every morning and
makes a cup of coffee, just likeyou do, right? And so I really
try to emphasize that as you'recollecting the data, we need to

(05:15):
be really respectful. We're notgoing to ascribe gender or race
to people unless we know forsure that that's how they self
identify. And then I think thebiggest shift that we had after
the first two years is what Inoticed in a lot of the research
around superintendent attritionand turnover, is that we are
just treating it as a 01, right,the superintendent stayed or
left, right? But behind everystaying or leaving as a story,

(05:37):
right? A human beings decidingto stay or leave or being pushed
out. And so the NLSD now has aqualitative component to the
database. So anytime asuperintendent turns over, we
identify all publicly availablesources that we can to identify
both the nature and the type ofthe turnover. Type is relatively
easy to find, typically, soretire, resign, fired or non

(06:00):
renewed. Unfortunately, we haveto code for things like death or
arrest and conviction, but wecode all of those things because
I do think that a district thatexperiences attrition through
retirement may be in a differentplace after that transition than
a district that experiencesattrition through a really
contentious firing process,right? And so starting to really
think through, how do we sort ofhumanize this process? And then

(06:23):
we also code, we use textual andsentiment analysis, and we code
publicly available sources onwhether or not the attrition is
what we call ostensiblyamicable. So the superintendent,
you know, retired, there was aparade. They got a plaque, the
football field got named afterthem, right? Everything seemed
fine, versus what we callattrition that takes place in a
politicized context orcontentious environment. So we
have keywords. We look forthings like Separation

(06:45):
Agreement, voter no confidence,you know, let go under
conditions that can bediscussed, those types of
things, right? So for everysuperintendent that turns over,
we have links, we have text, andwe have coding of what the
nature of that turnover reallylooked like. And we're able to
look at, are we seeingdifferences in the types of
turnover happening across womenand men, across white

(07:07):
superintendents, versussuperintendents of color, those
types of things. And so I thinkthat part is really, really
important. And then the lastpiece is just, I'm a mixed
methodologist by training, soall of the work that I do will
have this quantitative componentto it, but I'm always going to
have interviews withsuperintendents to try to see
what is the why and of howbehind this. And so it's really
important for me to be out inthe field talking with

(07:29):
superintendents to get theirstories. And really my goal is
actually with a lot of thisattrition and mobility research,
if you go on the Lab website,you'll see I have maps that have
sort of like moving dots allover and my goal is to be able
to capture individual stories ofthose dots. And people could
actually click in and see, like,why did this person move from
Maine to Washington? Right?
Like, and let thatsuperintendent tell their story.

Yeah, wow, that's a lot of work. And I'm
wondering how you even keeptrack of it all. That's pretty
impressive, how every singlemove. I'm also curious. So you
probably have heard of the RANDstudy in 2022 and 2023 Of
course, everyone was talkingabout how superintendents have
one of the most stressful jobsin America. Did that inspire you
to do some digging on your own?
What have you uncovered in yourresearch?

Yeah, yeah. A lot of the work that I do focuses on
how superintendents navigatepolitically contentious
environments. Attrition is sortof an outcome of that, but it's
not, you know, the input. And soa lot of what I do, I do a lot
of survey research and a lot ofinterviews. And so a couple of
projects right now are justtrying to better understand how
superintendents are makingdecisions. Like, what is their

(08:36):
decision making process looklike in politicized
environments? Seeing somereally, I think, probably not
like earth shattering, but someinteresting differences across
gender and across race. Women inthe interviewee sample are more
frequently, more likely to talkabout ways to utilize policy and
collaboration as sort of aprotection mechanism when they
make decisions. So they reallywant to have a process that

(08:59):
their school board knows thatthey follow, and they're always
going to bring in other peopleto help them make decisions.
That was less frequent amongwhite men, not all right, but in
our interview sample,particularly white men that have
been in the position for quitesome time, there actually
sometimes was bit of a like, I'mnot sure what the question is,
right? Because they didn't they,you know, oftentimes are not

(09:21):
questioned as frequently aboutthe decisions that they make.
People trust them, right? And weknow from lots of other
research, outside of education,just social science research,
that women, leaders and leadersof color are just questioned in
their decision making much morefrequently. So we're seeing that
in the superintendency, but interms of, like, the stress of
the job, yeah, it's really roughright now. There, for sure, some
of the things that we're seeing,I don't know if we'll get to it,

(09:43):
but we just did a big NationalSurvey on the Cost of conflict
to school districts andsuperintendents. And so a couple
of things that really stuck outto me around the superintendents
is that in the last school year,so 2023 24 we asked how
frequently superintendents feltfearful or worried about their
safety or the safety of theirfamily, and about a little over

(10:05):
a third of them said that theydid feel at least once last year
that they were worried abouttheir safety or the safety of
their family. Around 50% ofsuperintendents said in the last
year they experienced harassmentor saw disrespectful images or
comments of themselves online atleast one time. Around 10% of
superintendents said that theyexperienced stalking, property

(10:27):
vandalism or threats of personalviolence at least one time in
the last year. And I think somepeople read that, and I think
like, oh, well, it's only 10%but we know that anything above
0% is unacceptable in thiscategory. These are human
beings, right? Like they do notdeserve to have their cars or
their homes vandalized, personalthreats of violence, actual
violence towards them. So it isa really stressful job right

(10:50):
now. We're seeing increasing tothe proportion of sort of
political pressure coming fromoutside of the district. And so
I think superintendents aretrying to figure out, like, how
do I respond to things likepeople submitting book ban forms
that don't even live in thedistrict, or coming to school
board meetings and pushing onthings when, like, they're not
actual residents, parents,community members. So I think

(11:13):
politics is changing so quickly,and I've heard a couple people
say this, I'm still sort ofgrappling with it, because I
think a lot of politics is stillvery local, but I do think that
we're feeling like it's shiftinga little bit from all politics
is local to like some politicsis local, but we're seeing some
politics coming from sort ofthis national level as wellnow.

I know that you feel like this is not
statistically based, and I feelbad saying it to you as a
researcher, but it feels likethere's a high level of turnover
from the superintendency that weare experiencing that in and
around the districts that weserve, certainly in this area,
and I think that's not just inthis area, but across the

(11:50):
country. So my question is, howdo you think scrutiny has
impacted and changed for thesuperintendent over the year?
And I think the second part ofthe question I want to add on
is, do you see or know of anysuperintendent retention
programs that are are being inplace? The best practice of that

(12:13):
we talk about employee turnovera lot. I'm not sure that we do
about the people that are in youknow, what are we doing about
retention of those that are incharge of those districts?

Yeah, yeah. I think you're right. I think, you
know, obviously, with socialmedia and just the proliferation
of, you know, publicly availableinformation on the internet, the
stories around superintendentscrutiny are out there. So it's
really hard for as a researcher,for me to like, who's not a
historian, for me to say, likeit's increased, right? All I can
say is that it feels like a lot.
I can say from the database thatthe proportion of Superintendent

(12:47):
turnover that's affiliated withpolitical contention or
conflictual environment hasincreased from 9% to 14% over
the last few years. Now is thatwe're able to find more publicly
available sources that arecovering it over the last five
years. We don't know right likeand we need to be really open
and transparent about that. Butwhat we are seeing is it's more

(13:08):
frequently reported thatsuperintendents are turning over
in these conflictual andpolitical contexts. And so I
think some things that we sawthat were very common over the
past few years that did not, atleast publicly reported, seem as
common. Are things likesuperintendents being fired
without cause, right? That wasvery uncommon before COVID. And

(13:28):
I think, you know, the scrutinyof the superintendent, I think,
has the feeling that I get whenI do my interviews and I'm
looking at the data, is thatwe're trying to find quick
fixes, oftentimes, to problems.
And I wonder how much of that isrelated to school board
elections, right? And that ifyour term is two years and you

(13:49):
need to get reelected, and youknow, like, are you more likely
to potentially come in and wantto fire the superintendent right
away? Because there's a biggroup of folks in your community
that don't think he's a greatperson, and whatever it is, I
don't know, right? But I thinkwe can't be talking about this
without talking about sort ofthe nature of school board
elections and the pressures thatschool board members might be

(14:10):
under, as well as who has accessto run for school board and
things like that. So in terms ofretention, best practices, I
think there's been a couple ofstates. I know Oregon did. I
think maybe a couple otherstates have considered this, but
they have changed their statepolicy that prevent some of this
firing without cause. On thespot. If you're going to remove

(14:33):
a superintendent. I think this,ever you should definitely check
this. But I believe Oregon saysyou have to give them a certain
sort of, like, heads up, period.
And so I think those types ofthings are helpful. Of course,
there's always exceptions,right? Like, if a superintendent
was engaging in behavior that'sillegal, like, yes, we need to
remove that person from thatposition, right? But if it's due
to politics, right? Like, theseare things that are not healthy

(14:55):
for school districts. And so Ithink states and state
associations that are supportingsuperintendents, as well as
other national organizationssupporting superintendents, are
all kind of looking for what arethese sort of policy changes
that we might be able to makewithin superintendent contracts
that protect them a little bitmore from turnover, or that is
affiliated with the politicalsort of whims of the school

(15:17):
board or of the community? Idon't know that we have a great
answer for that yet, but what Ican say is that we do know that
superintendents that have strongtrusting relationships with
their school board, andparticularly their school board
president, are significantlyless likely to be job seeking.
That was from a study that I didin 2023 so we actually found in

(15:37):
that study that superintendentsthat were experiencing higher
levels of contention were notmore likely to be job seeking
than those that were not, butsuperintendents that had better
relationships with their boardwere less likely to be job
seeking. So politics wasn'tpushing superintendents out,
perhaps because superintendentshave this perception of politics
is everywhere. It's like, I'mgonna go to the next district,

(15:59):
and it's going to be there too.
But what is keeping them fromlooking to go somewhere else is
those positive relationshipswith their board.

That is interesting. Yeah, so I'm
curious. You just touched ontrust and relationships with
their board. One of the thingswe continue to hear from
superintendents we'reinterviewing in this series, and
one of our beliefs is that whensuperintendents partner with
their communities to help solveproblems really collaboratively.
They can build trust and they'remore effective. Have you found

(16:29):
this to be true in any of theresearch? Or have you looked
into that at all?

Yeah, I think there's lots of research around
the importance of communityengagement, coming in as a
leader and being inclusive inyour decision making processes,
being culturally responsive andrespectful of the local
communities, you know, valuesand culture. And I think those
are all things, you know, inhigher ed, particularly as we're
preparing superintendents, Ithink we really try to focus on

(16:55):
right. You can't come in like abull in a china shop and just
say this is the right thing todo, you know? And sometimes you
do have to come in, and thatdistrict does need to take a
hard look at itself and thinkabout it. Maybe there's like one
thing right that the boardreally wants you to focus on,
and the community seems reallyresistant to it, and you got to
get them on board, right? But Ido think that there's plenty of

(17:16):
research to show thatcollaborative approaches to
governance and to leadership,and then ones that really
respect the local community andlocal culture are the ones that
you know are gonna be more longlasting. I think that's also
what's challenging. And whatI've seen in sort of some
anecdotes of superintendents wholeave and then come back home,

(17:37):
oftentimes, I call it the LebronJames effect, where they like,
come back home and everyone'slike, really excited that
they're back, but then they facethese really unique challenges,
right? Because everyone doesknow them, and they're kind of
seen as this, like, sometimesseen as the Savior who's coming
back home, and maybe theirvalues, you know, they learn
some things, right? When theywent out, they got a PhD, they

(18:01):
were superintendent somewhereelse, maybe two other places,
for a number of years, and theycome back, and they have these
ideas that and this evidence oflike, what really works, right?
And the community might beresistant to that. So I think
that those are actually some ofthe harder relationships to
foster, collaboration and trustare the Lebron James effect
relationships.

Rachel, I can't tell you how excited I am about
the Lebron James effect weavingitself into this podcast. This
will make me smile for the restof the season. But my question
for you is, what are some of themost alarming or concerning
findings that you havediscovered through your
research?

I think for me, what's most concerning is
honestly the inequities acrossdistricts and across gender and
race. And so let me give you oneexample. This is really
specific, but one of the thingswe can look at is Superintendent
mobility across state lines, andwe collect all the extra data on

(19:00):
why, right? The qualitativestuff. And so there's not a
whole the sample is not huge.
There's not that many that moveacross state lines. But what we
find is that white men aresignificantly more likely to
retire and then move acrossstate lines and get another
position. So they are collectingtheir pension in their prior
state and then collecting asecond salary, right? We

(19:22):
literally have two women in thelast four years who have moved
across state lines afterretiring and are collecting a
second salary. And I shared thisdata at a conference, and
someone immediately like, raisetheir hand on their back.
They're like, what do you thinkof that? Like, well, it's a good
question. But I paused and Isaid, You know what? I think if

(19:44):
this opportunity were actuallyavailable to everyone right,
equally and equitably, maybe Iwouldn't be so upset about it.
But what I'm seeing is that it'snot right? That there is one
group of superintendents whosomehow have more access to this
and in part, it may be becausemen come to the superintendency

(20:06):
much earlier in life, right? Andso they have the opportunity
sometimes to move to twodifferent states, right? Because
they're able to get to thisposition by the time they're 36,
37 years old, women often cometo the superintendency, and
leaders of color often come tothe superintendency much later
in their career, for lots ofdifferent reasons, for

(20:28):
discriminatory reasons, becausethey kept a try and try and try
for reasons that we've beensocialized to think that we have
to be overqualified before we'reactually qualified for the job,
and so we don't apply until weget more and more education and
more and more experience. And sothose may be some reasons,
right, that by the time thewoman has done her
superintendency, she's like, I'mready to like, real, for real,

(20:50):
for real, retire. And so I thinkthose things are the things that
are concerning to me at theindividual level of the
superintendency, just thedifferential treatment concerned
a little bit with thesuperintendent search process.
It's a big black box that'sreally hard to uncover in terms
of who's applying, who's makingit to the finalist rounds, those
types of things. But we need alot more work in that area to

(21:12):
understand where the biases arecoming in, and where we can
better support and mentoraspiring superintendents. And
then the last thing would justbe the inequities across
districts. And so what we findin the attrition research is
that districts leading largerproportions of students living
in poverty, larger proportionsof students of color, are
significantly more likely toexperience multiple

(21:35):
superintendent turnover eventsin a short amount of time. And
so we know how importantstability and leadership is to
work towards the vision and toas we just talked about develop
relationships and trust withcommunity. And if we just have a
spinning door of superintendentscoming through every couple of
years, that's really hard to do.
And so I think we really need tothink about, how do we stabilize

(21:57):
the superintendency anddistricts that are serving
students of color and servinglarger populations of students
living in poverty.

Yeah, that's interesting. Rachel, one of the
things Doug Roberts from theInstitute for Education for
Innovation, is always trying totalk about and prove is a long
superintendent tenure is equalto increased student outcomes.
And that's an interestingcorrelation to make. I know
that's not something that'sreadily available, but it would
be nice to see that data overtime.

Yeah, yeah. I think that's one of the things.
If we go back, we circle all theway back up to the start of the
conversation where talking abouthumanizing the superintendency,
I think that's one of thebiggest examples of the way that
we really try to humanize thesuperintendency. Is like, what
data are we connecting the NLSDto? And so we've actually been
asked multiple times to connectthe NLSD to student outcome

(22:49):
data, and I have not done thatyet, and kind of told myself
when I built the data set that Iwouldn't do it. Because I think
when we hear the term studentoutcome oftentimes, we
immediately go to staystandardized test scores, right?
And for me, I just will notconnect my data set to state
standardized test scores, to astudent taking a single test on

(23:09):
a single day with nounderstanding of whether or not
they slept in a warm bed lastnight. They had a warm meal that
morning, like we don'tunderstand, right? And so I
think if I do think that we canconnect this data to other types
of outcomes that are reallyimportant and that can get at,
you know, students experiencesin schools. And in doing that,

(23:30):
though, I always think aboutwhat's in the locus of control
of a superintendent, what istheir like zone of proximity? So
some of the work that I'm doingnow is looking at the
relationship betweensuperintendent stability and
principal stability, right?
Because what we know is thatprincipal stability impacts
teacher stability, and we knowteacher stability does impact
students outcomes andeducational experiences, right?
So it's sort of like doing sortof a step wise process to get to

(23:53):
what is the impact ofSuperintendent turnover. It's
not just that the superintendentturns over and the test scores
drop, right? Like, it's thatwhat is the like logic between
what's happening and so what Ireally want to do with this data
set is connect it to those typesof things, potentially, right?
Connecting superintendentturnover, like when a new

(24:15):
superintendent comes in, do wesee changes in how they're
spending, how they allocateresources, right? Like, that's
something that is very much inthe control of the
superintendent, oftentimespending School Board approval,
that no impact student outcomes.
And so how do we connect thisdata set to those types of
things, but doing it in a waythat's really respectful of

(24:36):
like, what can thesuperintendent control and
what's in their zone ofproximity.

Okay, amazing.
Well, I look forward to thatdata, so let us know. We can't
wait to see it.

Yeah.

So I'm curious. We have to ask this
question, how do you think thenew administration is going to
impact K 12 leadership?

Oh, goodness,

Sorry.

Good question.
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I'vebeen reading a lot about this
stuff on, you know, the USDepartment of Education, whether
or not, sort of dismantling thatis even feasible, you know, in
the current politicalenvironment, seems challenging
at this point. But, you know,people are definitely saying he
could shift some things like OCRover to the Department of
Justice. He could shift thestudent loans, you know, over to

(25:20):
Treasury, those types of things.
I do know in his lastadministration that a lot of
positions at US, Department ofEd just went unfilled, and so,
like, capacity may drop. And soI think about, you know, how
that impacts the work of thesuperintendency. I think if
anything, like, first andforemost is there's a bit of

(25:41):
unsureness right around thefederal funding, around the
federal role in protectingstudents. Right? The federal
role, really, when I think aboutit, is around protecting
students rights, protectingstudents with disabilities,
protecting students who areidentified as English learners
in our communities, protectingstudents who are living in
poverty through title onefunding right, and the

(26:03):
responsibility is that we aspublic school districts have to
serve every single one of thekids that walks through our
doors. I just I think about theways that any sort of changes at
the federal level may mean thatsuperintendents really have to
step up right and make sure thatwe continue to say we are going
to serve every kid that walks inour door, and we're going to do

(26:26):
whatever it takes to do that, Ithink, related to a lot of the
work that I do around politicsand conflict, I will say like I
am concerned that over the lastfew years, superintendents have
increasingly been experiencingpoliticized attrition, and now
you know, are experiencingharassment, threats, are fearful

(26:46):
for their lives, and it's reallyhard for me, I think, to be
optimistic that those thingswill change for the better,
because we just selected someonein office who has used
derogatory terms towards womenand and leaders of color, and
when the President of the UnitedStates has said those things,

(27:08):
that emboldens people to saythose same things in their local
communities. And so I worry forthe safety of superintendents,
particularly womensuperintendents and black,
Hispanic, Asian, Americansuperintendents, superintendents
identify as LGBTQ communitymembers, superintendents with
disabilities. I just worry fortheir safety, and so I'm hopeful

(27:32):
that, you know, we as a nationare better than that, but I've
seen it unfold over the past.
You know, few years when someoneleading our nation was not
saying those things, and we sawimmediately, in the aftermath of
the election, people alreadybeing emboldened to use hateful
and violent rhetoric. And soyeah.

So one of the things when we talk to folks on
this podcast, we find ourselvesbeing more fan, you know, bigger
fans of superintendents andschool leaders and those folks
that think and do this work allthe time. What can we do on the
ground, folks that are not inthose positions, that are maybe
not researchers like yourself,that can do on the ground to be

(28:15):
a better support system, thingsthat we can do for our school
leaders at the community level?

Yeah, yeah, that's a really good question. Thank
you for asking that. I think Itell superintendents this when
I'm talking about, like, howthey engage in state policy
context, but I would say, Iwould say the same thing to
parents and community membersand how they engage in local
policy context is, don't just bethe no person and don't just be

(28:43):
the complainer. So when asuperintendent does something
right, great, does somethingthat you appreciate, or like a
quick email or a note to themis, you know, that takes 30
seconds out of your day, and itis something really simple, but
oftentimes all superintendentsget are complaints. And so just
a note to say, you know, thankyou for doing all that you do, I

(29:05):
think is really, really helpful.
And so I think the other thingsthat we can do to support
superintendents is be present. Ithink so much of what
superintendents are dealing withright now is misinformation and
disinformation. We actuallytrying to pull this up. So in
our cost of conflict study, weasked superintendents how often
they were dealing withmisleading, inaccurate or false

(29:27):
information about districtpolicies and practices, and 95%
said they had dealt with atleast one time last year. About
a quarter of them said they weredealing with it on a weekly
basis, or more frequently. Andso I think just reading, being
in the know, not going out onsocial media, and spreading
information that you don't havefactual evidence is true can go

(29:49):
a really long way right now forsuperintendents. I think that is
in the interviews that we'vedone that is one of the biggest
things that they're dealing withis just constantly trying to put
out fires, because communitymembers are going on Facebook
and saying, look, look what Ithink happened, right? And then
people take that for fact, andso being really cognizant of

(30:12):
being informed and not spreadingmisinformation.

Yeah, that's a good suggestion. And I'm
curious. Okay, we've talkedabout a lot of doom and gloom
today, but there are reasons tobe hopeful. What are you hopeful
about through your work thatyou're doing at the
superintendent lab and tell usabout it?

Yeah, yeah. So I'm hopeful that my hope as a
researcher, and why I do thiswork, is that by just bringing
these issues to light, we canactually have data and evidence
and informed conversations thatthen can lead to, you know,
positive change. And so I thinkwe haven't had this data before
on the nature of turnover. Wehaven't had a national database

(30:53):
that allows us to really betracking what states are closing
gender gaps. What states aregender gaps widening in? Are
there certain policies in thosestates that maybe are
contributing to that. And so Idon't think that we can
necessarily make great policychange unless we know what's
happening. And so I am, youknow, hopeful and optimistic

(31:15):
that by having the data, we'reactually able to make some sort
of positive change by saying,here's what we can see is
happening, here's the trends,here's the voices of
superintendents, right tellingus how and why this is
happening, and then we canactually think about what are
some of the policy or practicalchanges that we need to make, as

(31:35):
opposed to just sort of guessingwhat the issue is. And so my one
example of this is in Wisconsin.
It was a year ago. Wisconsin hada lot of Superintendent turnover
happening, and a legislator feltthat potentially one of the
reasons why there was so muchturnover is because the
certification and educationrequirements were too high,

(31:56):
right? And so they removed therequirements around
superintendent certification inthe state, and I don't think
there's any evidence at all outthere to support that. The
reason why superintendents arenot going into this profession,
or people are not going into theprofession, or are leaving the
profession, is because thecertification requirements are
too high. Can we be better atpreparing superintendents? Can

(32:18):
we improve our superintendentcertification training. I am
sure we can, but I don't thinkthat's the reason why we're
struggling to find people toapply to Superintendent jobs,
and why superintendents areleaving their jobs. And so I'm
hopeful that this data canactually inform those
conversations and informlegislators and policy makers to
say, here are some of the thingsthat we know actually are

(32:39):
contributing to these things,and so how can we think about
policies that are evidence anddata informed?

Well, I'm certain that folks that are listening
wish that we had spent two hourstalking to you, because the
amount of information here isgreat and brings up a lot more
questions, but we are at the endof this. So where can our
listeners learn more about youand connect to you directly?

Sure. Yeah. So I am a faculty member here at
University of Texas at AustinPublic University, so you can
Google me and find my emailaddress and send me an email. I
try to be pretty responsive toemail, so feel free to reach out
to me at any time there. Also,the Superintendent Lab has a
website, really easythesuperintendentlab.com we have

(33:24):
tons of data visualizations. Wehave lots of infographics on
things like gender gaps,attrition and mobility. Interim
superintendents, like theproportion of women and men that
are serving those positions haschanged over time, and we are
also collecting the 23-24 data.
We're wrapping that up rightnow, so we'll have lots of new
stuff rolling out in January of2025 with all the updated data.

(33:46):
So definitely check out the Labwebsite, and you can feel free
to contact me through thewebsite as well.

Amazing. Thank you so much, Rachel. We
appreciate your time.

Yeah, of course.
Thank you.

Thanks for tuning into the Build Momentum for
Education Podcast. If youenjoyed listening today, we
would love to hear yourfeedback, and we'd be grateful
if you could leave us a review.

This helps us to share these powerful stories
with even more people. If youliked what you heard, we'd be
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S05E10 - The Superintendent Lab | Dr. Rachel White, University of Texas at Austin

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}S05E10 - The Superintendent Lab | Dr. Rachel White, University of Texas at Austin