Women now hold one-third of the superintendent positions in the nation’s 500 largest school districts, according to the 2025 edition of the “Superintendent Research Project” conducted by ILO Group, a women-owned education strategy and policy firm. This is the highest level of women’s representation since the project’s launch in 2021.
Overall, there is a high level of turnover in this profession, with 23 percent of the top 500 districts experiencing at least one leadership change in the past year – an increase of 3 percentage points from the prior year. Turnover is also significantly higher than pre-pandemic historical averages of 14-16 percent.
Despite year-over-year improvement in women’s representation, the parity between women and men among the country’s top superintendent positions is not projected until 2054. However, half of all superintendents of the largest 100 school districts appointed this year were women.
Women’s representation among superintendents varies significantly by geographic region. In the Northeast, which has 37 of the country’s top 500 districts, women are 46 percent of superintendents, the greatest representation among regions, but down from 54 percent in 2024. The area with the worst gender parity in superintendent appointments is the Southeast, where only 22 percent of top districts (33 out of 150) are led by a woman. At the state level, women represent 53 percent of those serving in state-level superintendent positions, up from 47 percent in 2024.
Among new superintendents appointed in the past year, the majority were internal hires, with 40 percent previously serving as interim superintendents. Women are more likely to rise to the role from internal promotions and are more likely to hold a doctorate. In contrast, men are more likely to be external hires and to have already served as a superintendent prior to their new appointment.
Men are also significantly more likely to repeat as superintendents in the largest districts. Some 70 percent of superintendents who have served in multiple schools in the top 500 districts are men. Just three superintendents have held the top job in three different districts in the top 500 – all of whom are men.