State of the Superintendent — High Job Satisfaction and a Projected Normal Turnover Rate

To examine superintendents’ job satisfaction and short-term career plans, RAND researchers fielded a survey to a randomly sampled set of 291 American School District Panel district and charter leaders — including 222 superintendents — and then weighted their responses to be nationally representative. As of spring 2022, superintendents have positive feelings about their jobs despite their consensus view that the job of the superintendent and of schools has gotten harder over the past decade. Superintendents do not plan to leave their positions at heightened rates at the end of the 2021–2022 school year.