The ink on Madison School superintendent Dan Nerad?s resignation letter is barely dry and already the hand-wringing over finding his replacement has begun. The applicant market is tight, the job is tough, other places offer more attractive terms, warn the school administrators professional association and executive search firms, who arguably have something of a vested interest in tight markets that drive up school administrators? salaries and require executive search firms to navigate.
….District leadership is correlated with student achievement, according to a 2006 summary of research forwarded to me by the director of UW-Madison’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research, Adam Gamoran, but that’s not the same as saying good superintendents cause higher student achievement.