Is Superintendent...A Job For A Super Hero?

HELP WANTED: Dynamic professional to lead venerable institution through period of rapid change and political tumult. Will manage more employees than Texaco has and a budget bigger than Cisco Systems'. Must answer to mayor, Governor, seven-person board, unions, press and public. Workweek: 80 hours plus. Compensation: around $140,000, about 1% of the average FORTUNE 500 CEO's pay.

If that sounds like a tough position to fill, consider that the future of 14% of America's public school kids depends on the person who gets the job. The post is big-city school superintendent, and it's open in 13 major cities across the U.S. as a crisis in school leadership unfolds. With their responsibilities growing, their authority eroding and their average tenure dropping to less than three years, urban school leaders now hold a dubious honor once reserved for anyone managing the New York Yankees under George Steinbrenner: they have the toughest job in America.

In fact, as the job becomes more like that of a CEO, fewer school executives trained in the traditional way are willing and able to take it on. The pool of applicants is shrinking, leaving millions of America's poorest kids--in cities that include New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Baltimore and Las Vegas--in school systems run by the managerial equivalent of a substitute teacher.

In New York, schools chief Rudy Crew was ousted in December, following a tussle with Mayor Rudy Giuliani over Crew's resistance to an experimental voucher plan and his public reluctance to commit quickly to a renewal of his contract. Hired in 1995 to run a system facing its 10th chancellor in 12 years, Crew says now, "I knew no one survives in this job very long." In his last year, his relationship with the mayor and the school board deteriorated. Giuliani's growing sense that Crew "should be more willing to destroy the system that he runs" and Crew's political faux pas of calling a city councilman "too short" ultimately defeated him.

Crew survived longer than most, but the typical school reform takes five years to show results. As districts bob from leader to leader, teachers and parents find themselves stuck in a system that changes course more often than most kids change book bags. Says Arlene Ackerman, superintendent in Washington: "Teachers understandably are not willing to invest in a reform when they know it won't even have a chance to take root."

Serving poor, underperforming schools in the glare of big-city politics has always required an unusual combination of warm heart and thick skin, brass-knuckles management and political deftness. But in the past decade "it's turned into a keep-your-bags-packed kind of career," says Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools.

The job has got harder, Casserly says, because an increase in accountability for superintendents has been accompanied by a reduction in their authority. Ten years into the movement toward academic standards, which most schools chiefs say they support, they are getting their own report cards based on how well their students perform on state and national exams. At the same time, many find they lack the power necessary to raise scores.

One of the first items on Crew's agenda when he went to New York, for instance, was abolishing tenure for principals--a change he accomplished only after four years of fighting with bureaucrats and politicians. "If I want to get things done, like instituting a longer school day, I have to go get the Governor's signature, the mayor's signature, the commissioner's signature, the board of regents' signature," says Crew. "Do you understand how much of my life I could spend here just getting those stars in alignment?"

The most powerful star in many city school districts these days is not the superintendent but the mayor. Since 1991, mayors have taken over districts in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit, and now make school-board and superintendent appointments. In the best cases, like Chicago, where the mayor and superintendent present a unified front, the power-sharing arrangement has boosted school performance. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley in 1995 appointed Paul Vallas, a city budget director, to serve as CEO of Chicago schools. Under their leadership, the percentage of elementary school students reading at or above the national average has risen from 27% to 36%. "There are no conflicting visions here," says Vallas. "The mayor can't wage political attacks on the schools because he's ultimately responsible for us." Mayors of several other cities--including Washington and New York--are pushing for such authority, but professional educators seem wary, regarding such arrangements as a further erosion of their autonomy.

Ten years ago, Casserly estimates, most of the large urban districts in his Council of the Great City Schools could expect 40 well-qualified applicants for a superintendent opening. Now districts can expect about 10, he says, "and that's if they consider noneducators."