In this article, the author discusses how superintendents function in an environment of nearly continuous turbulence challenged by concerns and pressures that compete for their attention and resolution. The turbulence is inescapable. Today it constitutes the natural--but not the exceptional--environment of school board politics, local interest-group concerns and heightened accountability demands. With little down time to step back and focus on the big picture, well-intentioned school system leaders may postpone the critically important moral task of evaluating the quality of the schools' core work of teaching and learning against the social and political horizon of globalization because they are sucked into addressing the most pressing operational and political problems. Yet their sense of moral leadership demands that superintendents make an honest appraisal of what is lacking and what is needed.