Only a quarter of school superintendents in Texas are women, a new study shows. Why?

As you can read for yourselves below, current research places the responsibility for the under-representation of women in the superintendency on a number of factors including bias in terms of who or what a superintendent is supposed to look like. Stereotypical patterns change slowly. Women also structure themselves out of such positions, by not applying for these positions in the first place.

We have a wonderful program in my department, namely, the Cooperative Superintendency Program at UT that has had women well represented in it. Folks should consider applying. It's a great program. A high number of our graduates are taking these positions that open up statewide. In fact, back in 2020 Dallas ISD Stephanie Elizalde co-directed the program while she was the AISD Superintendent. It's truly a small world. And even smaller regarding the ranks of the superintendency.

-Angela Valenzuela

Only a quarter of school superintendents in Texas are women, a new study shows. Why?

BY SILAS ALLEN | August 18, 2023

Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Angelica Ramsey visits T.A. Sims Elementary School on the first day of school on Monday, Aug. 14. Ramsey is a part of a minority of women in top jobs in Texas school districts, according to a new report. AMANDA MCCOY amccoy@star-telegram.com

Despite making up more than three-quarters of the state’s teacher workforce, women are vastly outnumbered by men in school superintendent positions in Texas, according to a new study from a Dallas-based education advocacy group. Women hold only about 25% of the top jobs in school districts across the state, according to the report, which was released last month by the nonprofit Educate Texas. As school districts across Texas continue to deal with the fallout from an exodus of school superintendents following the pandemic, an official with the nonprofit says school boards should use the situation as an opportunity to look at candidates they might not have considered in the past. “There are folks that are sort of waiting in the wings, if you will, and no one’s even looking towards them,” said Priscilla Aquino-Garza, the organization’s senior director of programs. 

GENDER DISPARITY IN TOP SCHOOL JOBS EXTENDS NATIONWIDE 

The gender disparity in superintendent positions isn’t unique to Texas. In a 2022 report, the ILO Group, an education policy firm, found that, while about 76% of teachers nationwide are women, more than two-thirds of school superintendents are men. The ILO group also collaborated with Educate Texas on last month’s report.

The gender disparity was a bit less pronounced in the Fort Worth area than it was across the state during the 2022-23 school year, according to the Texas report: Women made up 29% of the superintendents in districts served by the Region 11 Education Service Center, which covers the western half of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Arquino-Garza said she doubts school districts in Texas are intentionally leaving women out of their candidate pools for superintendent jobs. But many also aren’t being intentional about including female candidates in those searches or ensuring that positions of power are open to women. Since the beginning of the pandemic, school districts across the country have reported abnormally high rates of turnover in their superintendent positions. At a time when many school boards are forced to think differently about who to hire for the districts’ top jobs, Arquino-Garza said they’d do well to consider candidates who have strong leadership skills, but have been passed over for those jobs in the past. In most cases, she said, those candidates will be women.

“It’s not like there’s a deficit in the teaching field,” she said. “It has been female-dominated for over 50 years at this point, if not more.” But despite that turnover, there’s little evidence that the disparity is closing, either in Texas or nationwide, said Emily Hartnett, senior managing director for the ILO Group. Since at least 2018, there has been nearly no change in the gender imbalance in school superintendent jobs, she said. She also said she hasn’t seen much attention given to the problem, either in Texas or elsewhere. In conversations with women in positions of leadership in school districts in Texas, researchers learned those women felt they hadn’t been afforded the same opportunities or mentorship as their male counterparts, Hartnett said. Several also mentioned a “good ol’ boys network,” an informal group of men in powerful positions that was difficult for women to penetrate, she said. 

FORT WORTH, DALLAS SCHOOL DISTRICTS HIRE FEMALE SCHOOLS CHIEFS 

The largest two school districts in North Texas, the Fort Worth and Dallas Independent School Districts, both hired women for superintendent roles last year. Fort Worth ISD hired Angélica Ramsey in September. Before coming to Fort Worth ISD, Ramsey was the superintendent of the Midland Independent School District.

In Dallas, Stephanie Elizalde returned to the district in June 2022 after serving as superintendent of the Austin Independent School District for two years. Before her time in Austin, Elizalde served as Dallas ISD’s chief schools officer. Ramsey, who wrote her doctoral dissertation on women in leadership, said the hiring process continues to be affected by bias, but she suspects it comes into play at a lower level. Many school superintendents served as high school principals before being promoted to central office positions, and she thinks social preconceptions about what a leader looks like play a big factor in who gets hired for those jobs. She recalled a time when she served on a hiring panel for a high school principal position in another district, and another member of that panel had reservations about hiring one candidate because the person “didn’t look like a high school principal,” she said. Ramsey said she also suspects that some of the disparity has to do with differences in willingness to apply for a job. An often-cited internal report from Hewlett-Packard suggests that women generally only apply for jobs when they meet 100% of the criteria listed, while men often apply when they meet only 60%. A report released in 2019 by LinkedIn came to similar conclusions: Although women and men search for jobs at about the same rate, female candidates apply for fewer positions than male candidates.

Ramsey said qualified women might be screening themselves out of school leadership positions because they don’t check every box, while male candidates tend to be more confident that they can learn on the job. Ultimately, that trend has more to do with societal ideas about what a good leader looks like than it does with any candidate’s ability to do the job, she said. 

Staff writer Lina Ruiz contributed to this report.