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CRITICAL THEORY AND LEADERSHIP PRACTICES
In the Spirit of Our Nation’s Children: A Study on National Diversity
Leadership Standards and Superintendents
Christa BoskeABSTRACT
The researcher undertook an investigation of school superintendents across the nation to
determine how they prioritized diversity elements within national leadership standards. To
achieve this objective, 1,087 superintendents, who were members of the American
Association of School Administrators (AASA) in 2006, completed an electronic survey.
Respondents rank ordered eight leadership standards from most to least important. These
standards focused specifically on diversity elements from the AASA, the National Council for
Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and the Interstate School Leaders Licensure
Consortium (ISLCC). Respondents ranked the three most important diversity elements that
promoted the success of all children. Respondents ranked the remaining diversity elements
that focused specifically on marginalized populations as less important. The least important
diversity element was being aware of language and communication styles of marginalized
cultures that facilitate and implement a vision for learning and shaping school culture. The
quantitative analyses included descriptive statistics, comparison of means, and one-way
analysis of variance (ANOVA). There were significant differences within and among groups
according to gender, race, age, class, geographic location, religion, and type of district.
Recommendations for practice and further research are made.
INTRODUCTION
Public school leaders in the United States are in challenging positions to provide every
child with a world-class education. The school superintendency is no exception. Today,
superintendents fulfill a multitude of responsibilities that proffer geographical and
demographically different school districts, which align with their professional rigorous
standards that catalogue the expectancies of aspiring superintendents. These expectancies
emanate a need for cultural knowledge, skills, and dispositions that meet high academic
standards for increasingly diverse groups including, students, parents, and communities.
Given the new demands of school superintendents, we need to understand the evolution of the
superintendency and its intensified requirement to meet the needs of diverse student
populations, holding schools responsible for data-driven instructional improvement for all
children.
Historian Raymond Callahan (1962, 1964) examined superintendents in 1956 and
discovered that superintendents’ roles were reinvented as corporate managers. Four major
roles emerged for superintendents from 1865 to 1910, including superintendents as classroom
teacher supervisors (Spring, 1990). The shift from superintendents being the teacher of all
teachers to the superintendent as manager occurred almost three decades later. The
superintendent as manager produces what Schneider (1994) described as a control core
Christa Boske, University of Houston Clear Lake