NAIS has been formally tracking tenure and turnover among member heads since 2019. In that time, we’ve seen hundreds of new leaders take on the challenge of running dynamic, diverse school communities—and that no one headship experience is like another. We’ve also heard a lot of chatter about heads leaving unexpectedly, which NAIS defines as after three years or less in a role.
Turnover can be disruptive, and it can be a positive thing for a community: a long-serving leader caps off a long and fruitful career, or a leader and a community who aren’t the best match decide to part ways. Still, research has shown that it takes leaders around five years to begin making lasting change, and leadership instability—no matter how understandable—can lead to decreases in enrollment and teacher retention.
NAIS’s 2023–2024 Governance Study found that while heads and boards were typically on similar pages, they didn’t always have identical priorities, and heads were far less likely than their board chairs to feel like their trustees gave them the full support they need. We know that vague or ambiguous language can start in the hiring process, and that it’s easy for school leaders to think they’re aligned when in reality they have two different sets of goals. In these scenarios, frustration, hard feelings, and even early terminations often follow. In a recent NAIS survey, 44% of heads even said that they had considered leaving their position due to stress or burnout over the past year.
Despite the many challenges facing today’s independent school leaders, the outlook is not uniformly bleak. The governance study highlights that most heads and board chairs are working together effectively, while NAIS’s internal data show positive trends in head longevity and representation. Derived from that data, these five insights help illuminate the state of tenure turnover in 2026.
1. Annual head turnover continues to decrease.
Head turnover reached a high point in 2018, when 13.3% of schools experienced a leadership change in a single calendar year. In the years since—even amid the disruptions of the pandemic—turnover has not returned to that level. It fell to 10.5% of schools in 2020, edged up to 11.3% in 2022 and 2023, and has declined for two consecutive years since, affecting 10.4% of schools in 2025. While this figure remains slightly above the 9.7% recorded in 2016 and 2017, the recent downward trend is encouraging.
Source: Internal NAIS data via Margaret Anne Rowe, “Head of School Demographics and Turnover,” NAIS
Turnover isn’t inherently negative—healthy school communities, like healthy leaders, inevitably evolve, and leadership transitions can mark the close of a productive chapter. Still, lower turnover means fewer schools navigating the disruption and uncertainty that even well‑planned transitions can bring. Especially in turbulent times, greater leadership stability offers schools a steadier foundation from which to do their work.
2. Unexpected head turnover fluctuates year to year, but it remains too high.
Picture a room full of brand‑new school leaders gathered for NAIS’s Institute for New Heads. They arrive knowing the years ahead will be demanding—new communities, new responsibilities, steep learning curves—but also hopeful that this role will mark the beginning of a long and fulfilling chapter in their professional lives. For most, that hope is realized. For some, however, the match proves far more fragile.
On average, about one in five new heads will leave their roles within three years or less of starting—a pattern that has held steady for much of the past decade. In the years following the pandemic, however, unexpected turnover has made up a larger share of overall departures: Between 2021 and 2025, more than 20% of all turnover was unexpected in four out of those five years, compared with just two years between 2016 and 2020.
While recent cohorts have generally hovered around this one‑in‑five mark, the class of 2022–2023 has faced a particularly turbulent path. Of the heads who began non-interim roles that school year, 23.8% are no longer in their positions. Although it remains too soon to know how more recent cohorts will fare, the data make clear that the past several years have been especially challenging for first‑time heads and those new to their school communities.
Source: Internal NAIS data via Margaret Anne Rowe, “Head of School Demographics and Turnover,” NAIS
Still, there are positive signs for most leaders. After all, more than half of heads who started in the 2019–2020 school year—and more than 60% of those in 2020–2021—are still in their roles, despite having been almost immediately thrown into the pandemic.
3. Mean tenure is creeping back up.
In the early 2010s, the average head of school spent close to nine years in their role, with many choosing stability during the uncertainty of the Great Recession. As economic conditions improved, long‑planned—and long-delayed—retirements began to occur, and average tenure declined as a new generation of leaders stepped in. By 2017–2018, heads had been in their roles an average of 8.1 years; by 2019–2020, that figure had fallen to 7.4. A modest increase during the first year of the pandemic brought average tenure to 7.6 years, but increased mobility soon followed, with tenure dipping to 7.2 years in 2023–2024. Since then, it has edged back up to 7.4—still well short of the nine‑year norm of earlier decades, but a tentatively positive signal.
Median tenure tells a steadier story. Throughout the mid‑2010s, the midpoint for tenure hovered around five years, meaning half of heads had been in their roles longer than that mark and half for less. Median tenure rose to six years in 2017–2018 and has remained largely unchanged since, suggesting that while fewer heads are staying for exceptionally long tenures, many are still reaching the point at which meaningful, lasting leadership takes hold.
Source: Internal NAIS data via Margaret Anne Rowe, “Head of School Demographics and Turnover,” NAIS
Another less obvious contributor to the lower turnover? Fewer long-serving heads. Looking at the data for 2025–2026, just 9.3% of heads have been in their roles for more than 15 years; that number was 13.9% in 2015–2016. While many heads continue to have long, fulfilling careers, it appears that many choose to retire earlier or move to a different school rather than remain at their current one.
Source: Internal NAIS data via Margaret Anne Rowe, “Head of School Demographics and Turnover,” NAIS
4. The share of women and people of color in headship continues to inch up.
A decade ago, just over one‑third of heads of school were women, and fewer than 8% were people of color. Since then, those shares have increased steadily. Today, nearly half of heads of school—47.4%—are women, and the proportion of heads of color has nearly doubled to 15.3%. These shifts reflect meaningful progress across the sector.
Source: NAIS DASL and internal NAIS data via Margaret Anne Rowe, “Head of School Demographics and Turnover,” NAIS
At the same time, the data suggest that turnover patterns differ markedly by race and ethnicity, particularly when it comes to unexpected departures. Between 2021 and 2025, among white heads of school, an average of 16% of unexpected head turnover occurred within three years or less of starting a role. Among heads of color in that period, that figure was far higher: an average of 35.8%—more than one‑third—of those departing did so unexpectedly. Put another way, while just 1.7% of all heads who were not people of color left their posts unexpectedly, nearly twice as many heads of color—3.3%—did.
These patterns underscore both the gains made in diversifying headship and the continued challenges of supporting and sustaining leaders once they arrive.
5. The portrait of head tenure is multilayered.
What’s the mean tenure of heads at boarding schools? What’s the breakdown of expected vs. unexpected turnover rates by total enrollment? How have demographics changed over time in Georgia, Colorado, or Delaware? What about the share of female leaders of color who started their jobs in 2020 and are still at their schools?
There are so many head tenure-related trends to mine and explore––and NAIS members have just the tool to find them. You can use the Head of School Demographics and Turnover dashboard to ask and answer questions like these. Now in its second year, this data dashboard is available for members to play with on their own time, requiring no coding expertise or visualization wizardry.
The main page of the dashboard, showing figures related to tenure and turnover, as well as filters to target specific head and school demographics.
The data grows richer by the year thanks to the hard work of our member schools. NAIS typically learns about new headships when schools update their rosters every summer, while demographic data are compiled from schools’ yearly data collection in DASL.
Ultimately, heads of school come to their roles with diverse backgrounds, differing expectations, and distinct communities, all of which will shape their journeys in immeasurable ways. By understanding who’s going where, and how long they stay there, we can help contribute to upward trajectories—for our leaders and their school communities.