Cornpi
‘eb
The New Normal for
Super/ntendents
A superintendents network in Pennsylvania
wrestles to make sense of systems that
‘may be beyond our cognitive limits’
BY JAMES H.
LYTLE AND HARRIS J.
SOKOLOFF
F
or the past
70
years, groups of superin
tendents from the greater Philadelphia
region have met monthly at the Uni
versity of Pennsylvania to discuss cur
rent trends and challenges relating to
their
leadership roles.
Recently, one of
the study councils decided it needed
“to
go beyond the generic, the hackneyed
and the mundane to develop a theme that is
exciting and cutting-edge, that deals with the
‘new normal’ that is evolving in these most
demanding times.”
The superintendents
shared
a simple but
disheartening perception: The institution of
public education is under siege, and even the
best-resourced and highest-performing school
districts are in a fight for economic and politi
cal survival
Within that context, the study council opted
to organize its programs around this theme:
Rethinking the architecture of leading and
learning. This enabled the school system lead
ers to consider a range of the issues they are
confronting:
From meeting the challenges of charter
schools to understanding the potential in new
teacher evaluation systems.
From considering how leaders in other
fields (e.g., technology firms) are dealing with
the current context to digging into ways to
SEPTEMBER 2013
SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR
21
