District-level leadership often has been perceived as irrelevant to educational reform. This study compared district political and apolitical board and superintendent turnover to student performance change on the state criterion-referenced test. Results included student test score decline as board turnover increased, particularly in smaller districts and when delineating politically motivated board turnover. Also, student test scores declined in small, rural districts where there was no superintendent change over the course of the eight-year study. Conclusions included support for the dissatisfaction theory, which predicts that politically motivated board and superintendent turnover may influence student performance.

This article explores potential links between school board member and superintendent turnover. Qualitative and quantitative data from 176 school districts in a Northwest state supported the use of the Dissatisfaction Theory as a useful tool in describing the political sequence of events in local school governance and established the necessity of distinguishing between political versus apolitical school board member turnover in studies of this type.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to report on the superintendent portion of the UCEA Voices III project.Design/methodology/approachA four‐year study to determine how school leaders, from several locations and contexts, describe their perceptions of and experiences with educational leadership related to the study themes, school improvement, democratic community, and social justice.FindingsStudy findings indicate that superintendents articulated these study themes in more general and practical terms than found in the academic literature, and share a belief that the themes may be mutually exclusive, and require contextual interpretation to be functional. The paper concludes by calling for extending our ideas of how to practice social justice, solicit broader community voice, employ shared decision making, and measure accountability.Originality/valueAuthors recommend that practitioners place more emphasis on individualized contextual and cultural realities that can minimize or even counter the intended effects of these leadership approaches in practice. Conclusions suggest that superintendents understand and practice a more inclusive form of social justice, sometimes having to control and filter majority stakeholder inputs to achieve more ethical, socially just, educational decisions. The study provides a critical and needed empirical evaluation of the theoretical concepts of shared decision‐making, inclusion of community stakeholders, and practicing social justice. As superintendents attempt to practice these concepts in a real‐world context, they have discovered and provided insights into the limitations of these ideas.

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The frequent turnover of school board members in the US represents a concern for many educational practitioners who worry about the discontinuity of leadership, leading to negative impacts on students and staff. School board member turnover is also a key variable in studies of democratic theories of public school governance. Using descriptive and comparative quantitative methods, through a survey of 176 school superintendents in Washington State, USA, data were collected on why school board members retire and resign. The purpose of the study was to rank the reasons given for school board turnover, delineate between political and apolitical turnover, and compare turnover results by district size and rate of superintendent turnover. Results indicated that in 807 school board turnovers from 1993-2000, 73% were apolitical turnover, with politically-motivated turnover and defeat increasing with district enrollment. Generally, superintendent turnover increased as politically-motivated school board turnover increased and districts grew in enrollment. However, superintendent turnover was highest in schools of 0-500 enrollment, despite the lowest rate of politically-motivated school board turnover, and lowest in schools of 5000-9999 enrollment with nearly the highest rate of politically-motivated school board turnover and defeat. The study concluded that unique contextual factors have a major impact on results in school governance studies and are difficult to measure with traditional quantitative methods and analysis.