Blazing New Trails - Connexions

Superintendent Decision-making and Problem-solving: Living on the Horns of Dilemmas 97
In addition, Opportunity to Reflect About Top the Three or More Dilemmas, Part D of
the survey instrument provided superintendents with the opportunity to reflect and comment
about three or more dilemmas that caused them the most stress during their respective
experiences as a superintendent of schools. Therefore, the Living on the Horns of Dilemmas:
A National Study of Superintendent Decision-making and Problem-solving survey instrument
is a comprehensive research tool that is designed to provide acute insight about the
contemporary American school superintendency and “living on the horns of dilemmas.”
Part A: Demographics of the Sample
FINDINGS
Once the quantitative data were collected and tabulated, the researchers concluded that
this sample was a fairly representative sample of contemporary superintendents. For example:
64% of this superintendent sample were male, and 36% were female.
98.1% of the sample had over 11 years of total experience in education,
whereas, 77.4% had over 25 years of experience, and 54.1% had over 32 years.
Most of the superintendents in this sample had between 11 and 31 years of
administrative experiences (72.9%), and 9.7% of the sample had over 32 or
more years of administrative experiences.
Most of the superintendents (88.8%) had 10 or fewer years in their current
position, whereas, 11.2% had 11 to 24 years of experience in their current
position.
Most of the superintendents held only this current Superintendency (65.1%)
whereas, 21.3% had one other Superintendency besides their current one, and
7.4% had two other superintendencies while only 6.1% of the sample identified
that they had experienced three or more other superintendencies.
Almost half of the sample consisted of rural superintendents (48.4%), whereas
a similar percentage (45.7%) consisted of suburban superintendents. Only 15
superintendents or 5.8 % of the sample responding were urban superintendents.
Most of the superintendents (62.6%) worked in school districts with a student
population of 3000 or fewer with 26.8% of them serving in school districts
with 1000 or fewer students, and 31.9% worked in school districts with a
student population of 3001-10,000 students, whereas, only 5.5% of this sample
were superintendents of school districts with a student population over 10,000
students.
Most of the superintendents (81.7%) worked in districts with 25 or fewer
administrators including the superintendent, and almost half of the sample
(49.4%) reported that they worked in districts with 10 or fewer administrators
including themselves.
Most of the sample (87.6%) reported that there were 10 or fewer schools in
their district, whereas, about half of the sample (48.5%) reported that there
were three or fewer schools in their respective district, and 12.4% of the
sample had more than 10 schools in their district.
53 superintendents or 20.9% of the sample had one or more of the schools in
their districts on the NCLB “Needs Improvement” list.