Rural Superintendents Research Articles

Rural communities need better state education policies

The specific needs of rural schools and communities have received limited attention from state policy makers, and many state programs have only added to the challenges that school districts in rural areas face. Michigan State University researchers surveyed and interviewed rural superintendents in Michigan to learn more about their situations. Superintendents identified teacher recruitment and retention, the need for mental health services, limited broadband access, and insufficient funding as their most pressing challenges. The researchers note that addressing these challenges will require state leaders to pay specific attention to rural needs and develop rural-conscious education policies.

Rural Superintendents’ Responses to COVID-19: Navigating Local Control During a Public Health Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a variety of responses by organizational leaders throughout the United States and internationally. This paper explores the responses of five rural school superintendents who work in a conservative Midwestern state. Using an exploratory qualitative research design, the study analyzes interviews and documents collected remotely to adhere to current public health guidelines. The study adopted a crisis leadership perspective to explore how rural school superintendents were responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and managing the politics associated with it. Findings suggest that superintendents were acutely aware of their community’s current political stance toward the COVID-19 pandemic and were especially responsive to the individual political philosophies of their elected school board members. The superintendents did not uniformly adopt crisis leadership behaviors to respond to the circumstances created by the pandemic. Rather, superintendents responded in ways that managed the political perspectives held by their elected board members and sought to reconcile differences in the board members’ political perspectives that precluded action. As part of this reconciliation, the superintendents leveraged public health information to shape and at times change elected school board members’ perspectives. This information helped the superintendents overcome political perspectives that led some of the most conservative board members to resist widely accepted public health guidance. Implications for the field of educational leadership, research on rural superintendents, and potential revisions to superintendent preparation are discussed.

Rural Superintendents' Perceptions of Principal Preparation

As national and state expectations for school leadership comptencies increase, new principals face an ever expanding role. Yet, scant attention is paid to the unique contextual needs of the varied school settings in which principals find themselves. This study surveyed rural superintendents of small districts (1-300 students) and mid-sized rural districts (301-600 students) to discover their perceptions of the developmental needs their principals display. Seven areas of need were identified by the respondents, of which three pertained uniquely to the rural principalship. The three areas were: understanding the K-12 school structure, preparing for the isolation of rural life, and knowing how to provide instructional leadership in an environment of scares resources (human and material). The superintendents were also asked their perceptions of the effectiveness of various principal training program delivery models. Discusses the cohort program, online-training and state approved alternative certifiction.

Identifying and Allocating Resources for Learning Improvement

This article investigates efforts by rural superintendents and rural principals to identify and leverage the local resources available to them to support learning improvement agendas within their schools. This study investigates practices within a diverse range of rural schools located in Washington State to understand how resources can be identified and allocated to best support student learning. In addition, this article explores the importance of family and community engagement in administrators' school improvement agendas. The conceptual framework for this study is informed by literature investigating resource allocation for educational improvement. This study was designed to better understand how rural education leaders identify, leverage, and allocate supports and resources, particularly those available within their immediate communities, to meet the needs of their staff and students. The rural schools represented in this study demonstrate trends in student achievement gains, despite challenges facing rural schools, such as increasing economic stratification in rural communities and diseconomies of scale in operating small schools and districts. Administrators meet these challenges by (a) maximizing teacher's instructional time through assuming duties often performed by nonadministrative personnel in other settings, thereby reaffirming the particularly multifaceted nature of rural school leadership; (b) forging formal and informal partnerships within the immediate community and geographic region to support student learning; and (c) leveraging the interconnected nature of rural communities in ways that increase community engagement in schools. Thoughtful community engagement strategies help manage the external politics of resource distribution within schools and ultimately materialize support for student learning.

Rural Superintendents’ Experiences with Empowerment and Alignment to Vision in the Application of Principle-Centered Leadership

This qualitative phenomenological narrative inquiry research study used narrative inquiry to investigate rural superintendents’ experiences with the application of principle-centered leadership in their districts. Ten superintendents from rural districts in east Texas were interviewed. Narratives were analyzed by organizing, describing, classifying, and interpreting data collected from the interviews. The study results support the notion that the application of principle-centered leadership helps superintendents to become effective leaders in their districts. Other findings from this study include the notion that effective superintendents practice the tenets of principle-centered leadership with different actions and methods based on their beliefs and personalities. Findings also emphasized that trustworthiness and trust is the foundation of principle-centered leadership, which allows for empowerment and alignment to vision. This study provides superintendents and other educational leaders with practices critical to practicing principle-centered leadership in order to become more effective leaders in their districts.

Challenges and Changes Faced by Rural Superintendents

This research study was designed to build grounded theory about the challenges faced by rural superintendents. Participating rural superintendents identified five areas that presented a challenge but that also applied to superintendents in other settings: school law, finance, personnel, government mandates, and district or board policies. Further, these superintendents identified challenges related specifically to the rural setting and to their lack of acculturation to the demands of rural school leadership. Focus group research conducted among rural superintendents in New York, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee indicated that the challenges of the rural superintendency were distinct enough to warrant some specialized preparation for such service.

Rural Community Input to School District Strategic Planning

A rural superintendent used action research principles in conducting a series of focus groups with community members, students, and staff. The focus group data informed strategic planning. At the end of a carefully designed process, district administrators found more agreement among residents than they had expected. Community members were grateful for the opportunity to participate, and the district’s strategic plan contained important goals that would not have been recognized without community input. Administrators believed conducting the focus groups themselves brought more benefit than if they had hired a consultant, because of the interaction with community members. The result was a model that could be used by other rural superintendents.

Case Study o f Three Rural Texas Superintendents as Equity Oriented Change Agents

For this qualitative case study (Patton, 2003 ), we used narrative inquiry (Erlandson, Harris, Skipper, & Allen, 1993) and sought to analyze extended interviews and field notes based on inter actions with three rural superintendents working in high - needs, public PK - 12 school districts in Texas. We collected data with regard to these superintendents’ perceptions of themselves as social justice/equity oriented change agents based on the Equity Oriented Change Agent or EOCA framework developed by Skrla, McKenzie, and Scheurich (2009). Our goal with this study was to glean greater insight into the work of these rural school leaders as potential equity oriented change agents. Additionally, we sought to ascertain any additional EOCA characteristics through analysis of the participants’ perceptions. The data revealed themes that aligned with the Skrla et al., (2009) framework as well as some emergent data beyond those EOCA characteristics. These theme s afforded us a better understanding of the work of these three rural superintendents as equity oriented change agents and how they perceive their work.

One Head – Many Hats: Expectations of a Rural Superintendent

Although urban and suburban school superintendents serve the largest group of students in terms of sheer numbers of schoolchildren, there are actually more superintendents serving in rural school districts in the United States. I examined the expected roles or “hats” of the rural superintendent by collecting data from several districts located in NE Colorado. Interviews of school board members and superintendents provided data, which suggested that the expected roles of a rural superintendent are multiple and varied. Five major themes or “hats” emerged that rural communities expected their superintendent to wear. These themes or hats included those of manager, planner, listener, communicator, and community involvement. Included in each of these major themes were many subcategories of hats that are forced on the heads of rural superintendents by their communities and by events that occur daily. This study suggests that there are differences in the expectations of rural superintendents from those serving urban or suburban districts. Administrator training programs at colleges and universities might better serve those students aspiring to rural superintendent positions by offering a specialization in rural school administration or at least offering a separate course designed to cover these unique expectations.

Accountability Narratives of Rural School Superintendents and Administrators: Moving from Two- to Three-Level Analysis

This article focuses on the broader political sphere as it affects superintendents and other constituents of rural districts. The current landscape of education reform focuses on accountability—particularly at the policy level of both state and federal education agencies. This article draws on the literature and an empirical study that examined how rural superintendents—“held accountable” through reform policy—articulate their experiences. The discussion of cultural and political effects of accountability policy finds insight through local superintendents’ norms, beliefs, and commonsensical understandings. Thus far, many of the examinations of No Child Left Behind have analyzed the “inputs–outputs” of accountability reform—whether through critical or empirical inquiry. Furthermore, past examinations primarily focus on either macro- (structural) or micro- (local) perspectives. Findings from this study suggest the need for a third (meso- or regional) level of analysis to understand how leaders articulate accountability experiences.

Young Superintendents with School-Age Children: Gendered Expectations, Effectiveness, and Life Quality in Rural Communities

Empirical studies indicate family concerns as a primary reasons why promising principals and central office administrators do not aspire to the superintendency (O'Connell, Brown, Guptil, Stosberg, & O'Connell, 2001; Volp & Rogers, 2004). Hesitancyto apply for superintendent positions is further complicated by the fact that the superintendency has largely been constructed in male images or archetypes (Jung, 1964), which are affected by context. And while psychology and sociology offer theoretically grounded empirical literature on work–family balance (e.g., Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985) and conflict (e.g., Sieber 1974), superintendents are not part of the sample. In-depth case study research was used to collect and analyze data on two effective rural superintendents (one female and one male) whose life conditions match three of the hesitancy factors (Rogers, Terranova, & Volp, 2006) associated with the next generation of school superintendents: having school-age children, spousal considerations, enjoyment (quality of life) factors. Participants were selected via snowball sampling techniques (Lincoln & Guba, 1993), and data sources primarily included narrative interviews with the superintendents and their family members (a total of 42 interviews). Documents such as the superintendent's calendar were also analyzed. Data were coded inductively and deductively into themes and subthemes (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Two conceptualizations of balance emerge from the data: an integrated view (superintendency as lifestyle) and a compartmentalized view (equal time devoted to each life role). Furthermore, traditional perceptions of gender permeated findings related to life quality and superintendent effectiveness. Findings indicate that the “superintendency as lifestyle” perspective appears to be more compatible with the next generation of school leadership. The article concludes with implications for rural superintendent research, preparation, and practice.

The Rural Superintendency and the Need for a Critical Leadership of Place

This article examines how school superintendents and parents in high-needs rural districts conceptualized educational quality. Specifically, this comparative case study of two rural school superintendents presents a contextualized understanding of rural superintendents’ and other educators’ mainstream views of educational quality, parents and other rural community members’ place-based views, and the tensions among these. Primary data sources featured interviews with two superintendents and their constituents, including Board of Education members, principals, teachers, parents, and community members. Findings indicated that both superintendents worked to create an aspirational culture in which education was the way out of poverty for their students, aspirations that were frequently at tension with community values. This article concludes with a proposed critical leadership and pedagogy of place that may help superintendents navigate these tensions.

Teacher Librarians as Connectors to the School CEO

Forty-nine rural superintendents in two Midwestern states in the USA participated in a qualitative study to investigate how they utilized research and information expertise of teacher librarians to solve district challenges and opportunities. Researchers partnered with six Midwestern regional offices of education who helped facilitate the study's focus groups. Resulting data indicated that a majority of superintendents were not accessing the expertise of the teacher librarian. They were not familiar with the role of teacher librarians, nor were they familiar with the current research on the importance of school libraries and librarians in advancing student learning and student achievement.

Long-Term Rural Superintendents: Characteristics and Attributes

This paper presents the results of a study of superintendents who have served in one rural school district for twelve years or more. Superintendents in twenty-four districts were identified and interviewed. The superintendents shared demographic information, insights into their school boards, and professional opinions as to the reasons for their longevity. Reasons for their success were a stable school board, open communication, hiring good employees, and working closely with the local community.

The Superintendent's Leadership in School Improvement: A Rural Perspective

ABSTRACT This paper contains a brief review of the research literature on superintendents’ leadership for school improvement as an introduction. Following that, the patterns of five superintendents’ leadership that evolved in five school improvement sites is reported; the activities in which the superintendents engaged in five quite different organizational settings is the focus. In addition, the strategies and events used by external assisters assigned to the sites to develop and enhance leadership behaviors are shared. The paper concludes with a short discussion of the unique conditions and influences on rural superintendents and their leadership for increasing educational effectiveness.

Social Behavior and the Administrative Process

Perhaps the most vigorous movement in administration in recent years has been directed toward the development of a comprehensive theory capable of generating both hypotheses for guiding research and principles for guiding practice. Despite many specific advances in special areas, such as hospital administration, public administration, business administraton, and educational administration, there still is no general conceptual framework for systematizing and interrelating our knowledge within and among these areas. It is still impossible to speak of administration in terms that would be acceptable to, or for that matter even readily understandable by, students and practitioners in the several special fields. This failure to conceptualize administration on a general theoretical level has been a major obstacle to the development of administration as a rigorous discipline, and the elaboration of theory is accordingly receiving increased attention both in "research" and "applied" administrative settings. The purpose of the present paper is twofold: (a) to describe a socio-psychological theory of social behavior having broad application to the area of administration and (b) to illustrate the application of the theory to major issues in administration. The four major issues considered here are: the problem of institutional and individual conflict; the problem of staff effectiveness, efficiency, and satis-