Metro Atlanta continues revolving door of school chiefs

School boards in Atlanta and DeKalb believe their districts will gain ground under new leadership, which explains the decisions to replace their superintendents.

The departure of DeKalb Superintendent Steve Green continues the churn in Georgia’s third largest school district. DeKalb ran through five school chiefs in the last decade. Hired in 2015 and almost immediately at odds with the school board, Green was slated to leave at the end of his contract in June, but the board voted to send him home in November and bring in longtime administrator Ramona Tyson to again be interim superintendent. So, while DeKalb will be writing checks to two superintendents for several months, only one will be showing up at the office.

The Atlanta Public Schools board announced in September it would not extend Meria Carstarphen’s contract when it expires at the end of June. There were tensions between Carstarphen and a new slate of school board members. APS, too, is searching for a new chief to take over this summer.

This turnover in two high-profile districts raises a critical question: Do superintendents matter in the long run?

School leaders come and go so fast in metro Atlanta that it’s hard to measure their lasting impact. A notable exception is J. Alvin Wilbanks, who has been chief executive officer and superintendent of Gwinnett County Public Schools since 1996.

The assumption has been that superintendents are the linchpin of student success and frequent change at the top upends decision-making, creates uncertainty in employees and can doom reform efforts associated with the old regime.

A 2014 Brookings study was the first major effort to quantify superintendents’ impact on student achievement. The researchers found hiring a new superintendent is not associated with higher student achievement, and superintendents account for a very small fraction of student differences in achievement. They concluded: “It is the system that promotes or hinders student achievement. Superintendents are largely indistinguishable.”

The study challenged the notion of superintendents as saviors, describing them instead as an element within an ensemble performance: “The transformative school district superintendent who single-handedly raises student achievement through dent of will, instructional leadership, managerial talent, and political acumen may be a character of fiction rather than life … Further, real superintendents … from the best to the worst, have very little influence on student achievement collectively compared to all other components of the traditional education system that we measure.”

Parents who want the best education for their kids ought to pay attention to the teacher, classroom and the school rather than the top honcho, according to the stacks of studies on key factors in student achievement.

After writing about education for 22 years and seeing metro districts cycle through superintendents, two factors became clear:

Most districts don’t keep superintendents long enough to see their policy changes and reforms take root and thrive.

Most school boards end up hiring replacements who sound a lot like the superintendent they just sent packing.