Dive Brief:
- Superintendents report an average tenure of 5.4 years in their current roles — roughly double the tenure of three years or less often cited as the standard in past years, according to the 2025-26 Superintendent Salary & Benefits Study from AASA, The School Superintendents Association, released Thursday. That tenure is in line with a prepandemic figure of six years.
- The report also found that the percentage of superintendents reporting declining economic conditions in their districts rose from 30% to 38% year over year.
- Superintendents leading districts with enrollments below 1,000 were more likely to report declining economic conditions, while those in districts with 1,000 or more students were more likely to report that conditions were stable or growing.
Dive Insight:
While superintendents’ base salaries tended to be higher in districts with higher enrollment, few reported having any predetermined tasks or objectives tied to pay or rewards. Just 14% said their contracts included any financial rewards based on an incentive or performance clause or a defined provision.
The study found that pay is also more equitable in public education than among S&P 500 corporations: The average ratio for superintendent salaries compared to starting teacher salaries was 3.53:1, compared to 285:1 in the corporate world.
That equity comes with caveats, however. Although women superintendents outpace men in the role on doctoral attainment by 10 percentage points — 51% to 41% — they made just 98% of what men earned in the 2025-26 school year.
According to 2025 data from ILO group, roughly a third of superintendents in the nation’s 500 largest districts are women.
AASA’s study found that Asian superintendents reported the highest median base salaries at $262,000, followed by Black and Latino district leaders at $225,000 and $224,350, while White superintendents trailed at $165,000. The study urges caution in reading into those findings, however, warning that the overrepresentation of superintendents who identify as White in the data pool makes definitive analysis of that data “difficult, if not inappropriate.”
Respondents reported an average of 7.3 years of experience in the superintendency, and nearly 90% said they intend to remain in their current school district in the 2026-27 school year.
ILO Group data from September, however, found that turnover for the position remains high at 23% among the nation’s 500 largest districts.
In a statement, AASA Executive Director David Schuler said the association’s 14th annual collection of superintendent salary information marks a commitment to analyze and compare data to track “the progress school systems have made and the work that still remains.”
The 2025-26 AASA Superintendent Salary & Benefits Study was based on a representative sample of 1,951 responses from superintendents in 49 states.
