What are the challenges facing urban superintendents today?
In my colleague Professor Susan Moore Johnson’s wonderful book, Leading to Change, there are 12 superintendent case studies. She examines leadership as having three strands: educational, managerial, and political. The challenge for the urban superintendent is knowing enough about the managerial and political arenas and having the skills to improve the instructional program over time. My students use these leadership dimensions to develop theory of action for their schools or school districts. We stress that our students are honed to the highest level in all three of those frames so that they have the time, the vision, and the strategic skills to implement their plan in a highly volatile political situation where the standards are as much political as they are instructional. For example, Arlene Ackerman [Ed.M.’93, Ed.D.’01], USP graduate and the former superintendent of San Francisco Public Schools, was faced with underachieving schools and a deficit. She realized she had to take care o
