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Most Idaho school districts have experienced superintendent turnover in the past six years.
Since 2019, 71% of Idaho superintendents have quit, retired or taken another job. Frequent leadership turnover makes it difficult to implement new programs and create a cohesive culture. Meanwhile, taxpayers shoulder the costs for a job search, hiring process and onboarding.
Idaho’s rate is far above the national level, where 44.4% of districts experienced a superintendent departure between the 2019 and 2024 school years, according to The Superintendent Lab, a research group at the University of Texas at Austin.
Some Idaho districts experienced multiple leadership changes: 18.2% of districts have had two superintendents leave and 6.3% have had three or more departures, according to the Lab.
The Lab’s founder, Rachel White, is one of the only researchers nationwide who collects data on superintendent turnover.
“The sentiment that I often hear is that studying superintendents is really hard because no two places are alike,” White said. “The work of the superintendent is so localized and so it’s really hard to study patterns and themes and trends across data when, so much of it is dependent on local context.”
The Lab categorizes superintendent departures based on publicly available information. What the Lab learned from one school year (2023 to 2024) is that 66.7% of superintendents resigned, 19% retired and 4.8% were fired. No data was available for the remaining 9.5% of departures.
Retirements were once more common than resignations, White said, but that has flipped.
Those short stays in a district’s top leadership position make new initiatives or statewide advocacy nearly impossible, she said.
“I don’t believe that superintendents can really start testifying and making big changes at the state level until they truly understand their local level,” White said.
Those categories don’t tell the whole story. The project further categorized if departures were amicable. White’s team estimated that 14% of superintendent departures after the 2023-24 school year took place in a politicized context or contentious environment.
White has collected six years of nationwide data on superintendents, the first project of its kind. For decades, there has been little research on the superintendency nationwide, with many studies current researchers rely on dating back nearly 40 years.
She hopes her data will help researchers get started on issues related to the superintendency, ultimately leading to a better understanding of the role and the issues that affect school leaders.
Idaho’s leadership lacks diversity Most of Idaho’s superintendents are white males.
Women make up 44% of superintendents, which outpaces national numbers. But Idaho leadership numbers are far less than teaching numbers.
Women make up 76% of instructional staff and 51% of principals, according to data obtained from the State Department by EdNews.
Nationwide, women make up about 29% of superintendents, White found. The lack of female leaders, despite most teachers being women, is due to a number of factors, White said.
The majority of childcare and parenting tends to fall on women, making the 24/7 job of a superintendent hard to balance with young children, she said. It can be difficult to even take on a principalship, she said. On top of that, school boards more often hire a high school principal over an elementary school principal. Women are more likely to be elementary school principals, according to NCES data.
Idaho school leaders also lack racial diversity compared to the student populations they serve. According to state data, 98% of Idaho superintendents and 96% of principals are white, compared to the student population which is 72% white.
About 21% of Idaho students are Hispanic but there are two hispanic superintendents, totaling less than 1%.
There’s one Native American superintendent in the state, where about 1% of students are Native American.
Retirements were once more common than resignations, White said, but that has flipped.
