| In this current age of accountability, urban school boards are looking for innovative ways to foster change in schools and create greater accountability within the public education sector. A question persists of whether greater accountability and more focused efforts toward school reform can be achieved more expeditiously under the assumed "tried-and-true" leadership of traditional superintendents or the supposedly more innovative approaches of a nontraditional superintendent. This study is a comparison of the philosophies and ideas of traditional superintendents and nontraditional superintendents in urban school districts. Ten urban school superintendents created the participant sampling. All were interviewed and shared insightful perspectives on accountability measures pertaining to federal mandates, as outlined by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) initiative, community involvement, and school board relations. The following conclusions were drawn from the findings: (1) Approaches to accountability should be viewed from all angles for the good of children in urban schools. The ideas and strategies of both traditional superintendents and nontraditional superintendents should be considered and appreciated. (2) The NCLB initiative should be viewed as an inroad to accountability and might be used as leverage for school leaders to effect change in urban districts. (3) Effective school community relations involve communication, collaboration, and empowerment to create an accountable system for reform in urban schools. (4) When hiring a superintendent, school boards must consider the fact that leadership is situational and that the attributes of an individual must be considered on their own merit, not necessarily based on an orientation of traditional or nontraditional.; These implications for policy and practice were derived from a focused effort to understand the perspectives of both types of superintendents and gain greater knowledge toward accountability and reform in urban schools. |
