One Man’s Mission: Saving Underperforming Schools with the Future of Minorities in Mind
Carlton Carter's 2017 interview on the pressures facing urban superintendents, updated with 2025 data on turnover and who leads districts.
Superintendent turnover data from 2025: how long urban superintendents stay, who holds the job, and what boards can do about it.
Dr. Carlton Carter spoke with edCircuit in 2017 about the pressures on urban superintendents, from short tenures to local politics and the small number of Black men in the role. A new section after the interview checks those figures against 2025 data on superintendent turnover and on who leads districts.
Dr. Carlton Carter discusses the complexities facing urban school districts
It’s no secret that many U.S. urban school districts are under performing due to many social, economic and political factors. I spoke with Dr. Carlton Carter of AASA and Howard University Urban Superintendents Academy about dealing with the many challenges urban superintendents face that might not exist in suburban or rural districts.
I was surprised to learn that the average superintendent in an urban school district lasts only two-and-a-half years on the job. Carlton says the biggest surprise for newcomers are the political aspects of the superintendency. The complexities of accountability, pressures to close the achievement gap and facing underfunded schools means that superintendents need to get creative and create a strong brand for their urban districts to get political buy-in from their community.
Only 2% of all superintendents in the U.S. are African American males. Carlton is doing his part to increase that number as an act of personal service to the education community. Carter wants to make a difference and is doing a fantastic job of being a role model.
Interview
edCircuit: Carlton, I think what’s fascinating is the cohort that you’re a part of in building up the next crop of district leaders. Tell me about what that’s like from your perspective. You’ve said that you’ve worked in so many different roles within districts. And to finally say, “I want to take this leap. I want to not only learn for myself but learn what that next step looks like,” what is that decision process like for you?
Dr. Carlton Carter: This is sort of a feel-out process. They bring on former superintendents, current superintendents, school board members, and school board directors and they talk about the rigors of being a superintendent and “Do you want to make that leap?”
They bring the statistic out that the average superintendent in an urban school district lasts less than 2.5 years. And so, you want to make sure that you’re not one and done and that you’re able to serve the needs of our children.
What brought me into that decision is an act of service. I’m in this to make a difference. And there are many other opportunities out there to do other work that’s less challenging but our youth in our urban districts really need our help and support.
DB: What has surprised you along the way in your learning as a part of that cohort? When you think about the challenge, the 2.5 years, and these sorts of things, have there been times where you’ve sat there and just thought . . . you knew going in that it was complex, right?
CC: Right.
DB: But maybe it opened your eyes to different things that speak to the daily challenges of running an urban school district.
CC: The politics. The politics of it because it’s a vicious cycle of failure; and until someone breaks that vicious cycle of failure it will continue.
When they talk about closing the achievement gap and they talk about equity, actually, if you really measure up equity and you go along the same paradigm as saying, “I’m going to dedicate these resources to this person; I’m going to dedicate these resources to another,” actually the underserved needs more resources.
However, you have less money because it’s tax-based. Not only do you have to do a job as an urban superintendent and as a leader in guiding the school system, but you have to go and lobby and advocate for your school system.
What I’ve found surprising is that you have to build your own brand and you have to change the narrative and perception of that district.
The politics and “going the extra mile” and championing for that district and also serving the needs of our underserved parents so that the children can get into school to learn because if their basic needs are not met ─ as you know in Maslow’s hierarchy of learning ─ there’s no way that they can learn.
What you’re facing is reputation. You’re facing dysfunctions from the school board. You’re facing less money from the state. These are the challenges of being an urban superintendent.
The burnout is tremendous.
DB: I don’t think we’ve spent enough time thinking about the challenges and the opportunities and communicating to an urban school environment community that changes the narrative, which is that there is opportunity in the school in your community. There are ways that we can help divert and change that vicious cycle that you spoke of.
That’s has to be part of everyday communicating with the school environment, does it not?
CC: There has to be reaching to the parents. These are constituent services. Also, the media plays a big part in it, because you have some people who are for you and those who are against you.
And some other media is feasting off the dysfunction of the school system; and, sometimes, you have some news outlets who want to celebrate the successes.
You also have to change public perception along with your constituent services ─ building strong PTAs, going out there and building strong business partnerships to invest in “Why should we be here? Why should we believe in you? Are you going to be here long enough?”
And then, here’s the other problem: When they make the changes that you need to make, of course, not everybody is going to be happy. Somebody is benefiting off of the chaos of an underperforming school system.
And so, when the elections come and you have your school board members, you may have the school board members who generally support you and hire you.
But in the next election, you could have a brand new set of school board members and they totally have a different agenda in their minds and they decide, “This is not the direction we want to go so we would like to try someone new.”
DB: Carlton, we’ll touch on a sensitive topic, one I think that’s important in education and in society, and that’s around the potential responsibility that you might feel as an African-American in going towards the superintendent position because we know that we’re trying to see more diversity that is reflective of our communities because if we want young people to aspire to not only succeed in education but, then, to also work and give back, having role models is a key piece to that.
CC: Correct.
DB: So what is that like for you just to know that there are young people who are, I would imagine, looking up to you in your own community who are not only are cheering you on ─ but it just changes the dynamic, does it not?
CC: Yes, it does. It does change the paradigm. But I also want to bring on a staggering statistic to you that there are less than 2% African-American male superintendents in this country. However, if you read the statistics, by 2044, the minority will be the majority of the United States
DB: So are we planning accordingly?
CC: We are not. The dynamic shifts have not adjusted. So you may have career educators who have been teaching for 20 to 25 years but the dynamics of the Latino population, the African-American population has risen. Therefore, the game has changed. Some people are wanting for the days that “I wish the students would be able to sit in rows and just listen to what I’m saying.”
My son is operating a laptop; he’s operating his tablet; and he’s watching TV at the same time. All those neurons are firing. If all those neurons are firing, why are we having our children sitting in rows in a non-engaging atmosphere?
And so, that is what is happening to our youth. They are being stimulated and their attention spans are a lot shorter; and it’s also a cultural difference in the way they learn.
DB: Do you find that they are having more conversations around the cultural component that we’re talking about now? Are there active conversations around that where we’re saying, “Wait a minute, why don’t we have more diversity at a district-leadership level?” Are these active conversations that you’re hearing outside of your cohort.
CC: Yes. Those are active conversations that are going around to make sure that there’s proper representation for the district that you’re serving. And so, that seems to be a great disparity. But nothing really has changed yet because we’re still at around two percent. However, that does not reflect what our children out there ─ that we are serving ─ represents.
It should all be about diversity but not a low rate of two percent.
DB: No, because messages whether they’re verbal or not are still impacting those around us; and if young people don’t see representation, we are playing a part in that vicious cycle.
CC: Absolutely.
This article was originally published on The Huffington Post
- The Huffington Post: Community Connections For Students And Schools
- The Philadelphia Tribune – Education Roundup: Recruitment fair for Black male educators
- The Washington Post – Intense competition for teachers inspires urban schools to train their own
Superintendent turnover in 2026: how long urban superintendents stay and who leads them
Dr. Carlton Carter’s interview above was recorded in 2017, and it opens with a number that has been repeated often since: the average urban superintendent lasts about two and a half years. Superintendent turnover affects every decision a district makes, because a plan that takes four years to show results is hard to carry through when the person who started it leaves after two. This section looks at what the tenure figures actually measure, what newer data show about turnover and about who holds the job, and what school boards can do with that information.
Two ways to count how long a superintendent stays
Tenure figures answer different questions depending on how they are counted. Current tenure is how long the people in the job today have held it so far, and it is always shorter than the length of a full term, because many of those people are still working. Completed tenure is how long superintendents stayed once they had left.
In 2018, Education Week reported an analysis by the Broad Center covering 2003 through September 2017. It found that big-city superintendents stayed about 5.5 years on average in completed tenures, and about 6 years in the 100 largest districts, with current superintendents in those districts at close to four years. The same article described a 2014 survey by the Council of the Great City Schools, in which 53 of 66 member districts responded. That survey found a current average of 3.18 years, the “about three years” figure that became the popular claim, and a completed average of 4.5 years that drew little attention. The 2.5 years Carter mentions is close to these current-tenure figures, and the interview does not say which kind of count it came from, so it should not be read as the length of a typical full term.
What the most recent data show
The Council of the Great City Schools published Urban District Superintendents: Characteristics, Tenure, and Salaries in March 2025 (summarized in its April 2025 newsletter), covering the 77 member districts and the school years 2018-19 to 2022-23. In the full report, superintendents serving at the time averaged about 2.72 years in the job, and the permanent superintendents who held it immediately before them averaged about 4.85 years, a difference of about 2.13 years. Among current superintendents, the smallest urban districts have the longest tenures and the largest have the shortest. The Council’s executive director, Ray Hart, said in the newsletter that there is still work to be done to ensure sustained and stable leadership within the Council’s districts. Because the figures describe the Council’s member districts, they are best read as a pattern among large urban districts.
These figures support Carter’s central point. Current urban tenures of about 2.7 years sit close to the number Carter cited in 2017, and a board that expects an incoming superintendent to finish a multi-year plan has to account for that.
Who leads the district
Carter also cited the share of Black men among superintendents, which Carter gave as under 2 percent. The picture has changed, though the data come from different groups and should not be set side by side too quickly. The School Superintendents Association (AASA) published a 2025 mid-decade update to its American Superintendent Study. It found that the share of respondents identifying as Black or African American rose from 2.1 percent in 2020 to 4.5 percent in 2025, and the share of superintendents of color overall was 10.3 percent. Among female superintendents, 7.2 percent were Black, and among male superintendents, 3.3 percent were Black.
That study has limits that AASA states itself. It had 1,095 complete responses from 49 states, the design was not random and relied on volunteers, and 56 percent of respondents worked in rural districts, with about 70 percent in districts under 3,000 students. It therefore says little about big cities. For urban districts, the Council’s 2025 report found that 65 percent of superintendents in its member districts are Black or Hispanic, and that Black men, at 23 percent in 2023, are the largest single group. The difference between the two sets of numbers comes mainly from who was counted: the national survey is mostly small rural districts, and the Council covers large urban ones.
AASA also asked about community support, a theme Carter returns to when describing the politics of the job. Of White superintendents, 48 percent reported feeling very supported by their communities, compared with 37 percent of Black superintendents, and AASA describes the gap as significant.
What boards and communities can do
- Ask for completed tenure, not only current tenure, when a search firm or report quotes a figure, and ask which districts it covers.
- Write the district’s multi-year goals so they survive a change of leader, with a plan that names who holds each commitment.
- Plan for the transition. Outgoing and incoming leaders and the board can agree on a handover before the first day.
- Treat community support as part of the board’s work. Carter’s account of reaching parents, local media and business partners describes tasks a board can share with the superintendent.
- Build a pipeline of internal and external candidates, which is the purpose of the Howard University Urban Superintendents Academy cohort Carter describes.
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