I recently was looking through some resumes that I found online of people who were selected to be interviewed in a very extensive search for a superintendent. For confidentiality reasons, I am not going to post those resumes or link them nor mention the school district that was doing the search. There was just something that leaped off the page to me so I wanted to share and get some feedback.
I looked at five resumes of very distinguished people. They have had long careers of working with public schools at the district level as well as some being leaders from the private sector. The thing that jumped off the page to me is that of the five resumes only one of them had experience working as a principal, vice-principal, and classroom teacher. Everyone else came from the private sector to the district level and then to area superintendents and director of programs, not having led a single school. Does anyone else find this disturbing? Maybe it is just me but I feel that if someone is going to lead a massive amount of schools and make critical decisions that will affect the lives of children, they have better spent a great deal of time in the “trenches” of the school and they know what the public school anatomy is like. I sure do not want the head of surgery at a hospital being a person that knows nothing about the human body or its anatomy.
So who got the job in the end? Well, you guessed it, not the person with the experience as a school leader. The businessman with the business background and no school leadership experience. So what do you think? Should the “head honcho” be the leader without experience leading and school and being in the “trenches” with the teachers and the children?