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Compton, Calif. — Fifteen years ago, the challenge of leading the Compton Unified School District would have scared off even the most confident education leader. Darin Brawley almost passed it over.

The urban system, just off one of Los Angeles’ major freeways, was headed for state takeover and had a 58% graduation rate. When the opening was posted, “I thought, ‘Compton, I don’t want to be in Compton,’ ” Brawley said.

But Brawley saw a “pocket of success” at some elementary schools that he could build on. Accepting the job in 2012, he instituted a set of routines, like in-school tutoring and frequent multiplication practice. Weekly quizzes let teachers know precisely which students need extra help.

Fourteen years later, the district, with a 91% poverty rate, is one of the nation’s fastest-improving.

“If you go back 15, 20 years ago, Compton was not the place where most parents would have kept their kids,” he said. In fact, it was the first district in California where families tried to convert a low-performing elementary school into a charter under a state “parent trigger” law. “Now, we see a reversal.”

The district is also one of only 78, out of the nation’s 500 largest, that has maintained consistent leadership at the top since the pandemic, according to a new analysis from ILO Group, a consulting firm. At the state level, all but seven have changed education chiefs at least once, with more turnover coming once new governors take office next year.

As in Compton, ILO’s data shows, students are better off when district leaders stay longer.

In those with no leadership changes between 2019 and 2025, kids performed better in reading and math — showing at least a month of extra learning — than those in districts with turnover. In women-led districts, the advantage was nearly two extra months of learning in math, based on the Stanford Education Data Archive, a comparable measure of student learning across states. 

“Stability really matters within a community,” said Julia Rafal-Baer, the ILO Group’s CEO. In those with high turnover, the kids who were in kindergarten at the start of the pandemic have likely seen multiple reading programs “or their parents were asked to start one more strategic planning process. It gets old.”

Other districts in the top 500, sometimes embroiled in controversy, have experienced multiple leadership changes since the pandemic. DeKalb County, Georgia, for example, is on its fourth chief since 2020. Former Superintendent Devon Horton was indicted in August on charges that he assaulted his wife in front of his two children. 

The East Baton Rouge district in Louisiana is also on its fourth superintendent since 2020, with current leader Lamont Cole facing charges for bribery and money laundering stemming from his time as a city councilman. He denies the accusations, and board members say they support him. But they’ve also tightened up oversight of contracts. 

Overall, ILO’s latest review shows that churn is down for the first time since the pandemic. Last year, it appeared that districts had reached a “new normal,” with turnover ranging from 20% to 23% for five years straight. But this year, among the top 500, it has dropped to 17%, which is closer to the typical pre-COVID levels of 14% to 16% reported by AASA, the School Superintendents Association.

Rafal-Baer cautioned that while the “carousel of leadership seems to have slowed down,” the results are just a snapshot. “This isn’t a return to normal so much as the system finally catching its breath.”

The decline in turnover, she added, could point to the current financial constraints on districts as they adjust to the end of federal relief funds and ongoing declines in enrollment.

“These searches are very expensive,” she said. A Florida district recently spent about $48,000 to find a new leader, while the Clark County district’s search in 2024 exceeded $100,000. “There may be less of a desire to tell your community, when you’re cutting assistant principals, that you’re now going to spend money on a search firm.” 

A ‘flashpoint’

Rachel White, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and founder of a research center on school superintendents, suggested the pandemic years were an anomaly. School board fights over COVID-related closures, masks and culture war issues “were obviously quite volatile,” she said, and in multiple districts, led to superintendents being abruptly dismissed. 

That was “hopefully a once-in-a-lifetime flashpoint,” she said. “Maybe school boards … are less likely to do away with the superintendent who they disagree with ideologically on one thing.” 

Her own research on superintendent turnover echoes connections ILO made between student learning and consistent leadership. While studies prior to the pandemic showed minimal impact of turnover on student outcomes, “chronic instability” can hit neediest students the hardest, White said. 

According to a forthcoming paper, she found that students in high-poverty districts with repeated leadership turnover were about two months of learning behind in math and six weeks behind in reading compared with those in systems with the same leader since 2019.

Leaders who stay in a district longer are more likely to transfer knowledge throughout the organization, she said, and often build up trust with the public.

“The longer a superintendent stays, the more people believe they are committed to that community,” she said. “You can take some risks. It’s really important to be able to say, ‘Hey, this might not work out, but I think there’s potentially some return on investment here.’ ” 

Policy experts like to talk about “durable” learning and success for schools. Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, says that not only is leadership churn “one of the greatest threats to durability,” but that school boards need superintendents who view instruction as the chief priority, not just one of many initiatives.

Brawley, who was a science teacher and principal in other districts before moving into leadership, has such a “strong convictions” about improving math and reading, White said, that he’s been able to keep the district moving forward despite other political issues that superintendents often navigate. 

“There’s a real belief that these students are brilliant and they just need the right resources and a stable teacher workforce,” she said. 

His methods aren’t popular with everyone. The Compton teachers union president has questioned his intense focus on testing. But Cecilia McDuffie, principal of Foster Elementary, said the emphasis on data, combined with practices implemented at all schools, has helped her students rise from the bottom.

On a recent morning, a week after school started, Foster students spent time responding to the writing prompt: What do you like about your teacher? Leaders increased their focus on writing — and significantly cut back on screen time —  after observing that students couldn’t recall what had been taught. 

“We know that writing elicits a connection,” Brawley said. “If you don’t write it down, you’re not really learning it.” 

Foster was not a “pocket of success” when Brawley arrived in Compton. In 2014, less than a quarter of students met or exceeded state standards in reading and math. Last school year, 77% of students scored that high in those subjects, and 73% reached that level in science, nearly hitting the goal of 75%.

McDuffie said that Brawley has created systems that will outlast him.

“If he were to leave tomorrow, I would know that I always need to have a plan. I need to always refine my plan based on data,” she said. “And I need to start all my interventions early. You can’t wait until March.”

While ILO’s data captures the pandemic period, some districts, like Bridgeport, Connecticut, have experienced frequent turnover across a much longer period. Since 2005, the district has had eight superintendents, and former leader Carmela Levy-David left in late 2024 after a near-unanimous no confidence vote from the teachers union. Each transition “carries some costs,” said Joseph Sokolovic, vice-chair of the board. 

“New leaders often bring new priorities, and different approaches to implement those priorities,” he said. “Community and board relationships must be rebuilt. Trust must be earned again.”

But he said it’s important to put the instability in context. Two turnovers occurred while the district was under state takeover. The district also has one of the highest-poverty rates in the state, and spends less per student than wealthier districts like Greenwich, which has seen even more turnover in the past 20 years. 

“No superintendent, regardless of talent, can eliminate concentrated poverty or erase decades of economic neglect,” Sokolovic said. With the district currently conducting another search, he said the district needs “a leader willing to commit for the long term, someone who understands the complexities of an urban district and is willing to confront difficult issues directly.”

‘Route to the superintendency’

School boards should also look for instructional expertise, said Rafal-Baer.

A women-owned organization, ILO Group keeps close track of where women are becoming district chiefs and their routes to the position. National data shows that women are twice as likely as men to have an academic post, like curriculum specialist, on their resume. But just a handful of current superintendents came from a position leading curriculum and instruction.

“Given where student outcomes stand right now, you would expect the academics seat to be the surest route to the superintendency. It turns out to be one of the rarest,” she said. “Boards keep saying instruction is the priority. Their hiring says otherwise.”

Overall, 34% of superintendents in the top 500 districts are women, a 1 percentage point increase since last year and a 6-point jump since 2019. Fifty-one of the nation’s women superintendents are also a first of some kind in their districts — first woman superintendent, first Black woman or first Latina superintendent. California has the most, with 11 leaders who fit one of those descriptions, while Texas has six.

In 2018, when the Aldine Independent School District, near Houston, was looking for a new superintendent, two of the board members wanted a Hispanic leader. With a 73% Hispanic population, Superintendent LaTonya Goffney, who is Black, understood why. 

“I didn’t take it personally,” she said. “But I’ve been intentional about building relationships and connecting with the community.”

As another one of the 78 districts that has kept the same leader since the pandemic, Aldine struggled more than neighboring districts to bounce back from academic declines. Too many inexperienced teachers was one reason, an investigation found. But the board gave Goffney more time and renewed her contract in 2022 through next year.

The district still trails neighboring systems in state accountability rankings, but the number of F-rated schools has fallen from 21 to 2 since 2023, and the district’s overall score increased this year from 75 to 79.

Still, in a state where districts with low-performing schools are increasingly at risk of state takeover, Goffney feels constant pressure to show steady progress. As enrollment begins to decline in the state, the district sees competition not just from charter schools and a new private school choice program, but from neighboring districts trying to “cherry pick” Aldine’s students, she said.

“My focus, she said, “is on making sure that Aldine is the best choice.”