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Rethinking the Urban School Superintendency: Nontraditional Leaders and New Models of Leadership

Major cities in the United States, unhappy with persistent achievement gaps between students of different races and socioeconomic backgrounds, now search for highly effective medicine men who will upgrade urban school productivity. These efforts stand in stark contrast to the first two hundred years of the Republic, when villages relied on local ministers, elders, or farmers with extra time in the winter to visit the schools, many of which operated for only a few months of the year. Buffalo and St. Louis were the first cities to appoint a superintendent of schools in 1837. Within a dozen years Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, New York City, Brooklyn (a separate system), and San Francisco followed suit, and by the 1880s Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles named superintendents as well. Previously, cities used mayors, school board members, building inspectors, business agents, or treasurers to follow the money and check on the schools, not always wisely or well (Cronin, 1973). The first assignment given to the new Buffalo city school superintendent was to “ascertain where the schools were situated” (Reller, 1935, p. 29); the new city lacked a complete roster of schools, and the superintendent set out in a horse-drawn buggy to make inquiries. The Buffalo superintendency was an elective post between 1853 and 1916, as was the San Francisco superintendency from 1856 to 1923 (Gilland, 1935). The Philadelphia Public Education Association, a group of wellborn citizens, explained the early model as they envisioned it: “The Board of Education holds the same relationship to the public schools as a Board of Directors holds to a bank or railroad. It would be as reasonable to argue that the Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania (Railroad) should run the road, and dispense with a President as to argue that the