Education is a profession that is supposed to be about nurturing, developing, helping, supporting, and building not only intellectual competence but affective qualities. Race to the Top, with its harsh and punitive approach to school reform, ruined the lives and careers of many dedicated educators. Many were harmed, not only children, who were tested endlessly, but teachers and principals who were unjustly fired.
What happened to the principals who were fired because their school had low test scores? Carole Meyer of Washington State was one of them. She was fired in 2010 because her school was among the lowest performing in the state. She decided to write a dissertation about what happened to her and others similarly placed. She interviewed six other principals who were fired in 2010. She earned her doctorate. She is now a principal in a middle school that she has led successfully for the past five years. Her dissertation can be found here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxkcmNhcm9sZWxtZXllcmVkZHxneDozNzc1OTI4Yjc1ODNiZTRi.
The title of her dissertation is “School Principals’ Reassignment Under Race to the Top Legislation: Washington State Principals’ Sense Making and Affective Experience”
She writes:
The purpose of this qualitative interview study was to explore how K-12 public school principals in Washington State “made sense” of the experience of being reassigned under the provisions of Washington State’s version of RTTT.
The research questions this study attempted to answer were:
(a) How do principals describe what happened when they were reassigned?
(b) How did principals work with staff, students, district, and community around the issue of being reassigned?
(c) How did reassignment impact principals emotionally, personally, and professionally?
(d) What are principals’ evaluations of this type of policy approach?
And (e) What were the human costs/benefits associated with reassignment?
Conceptual frames related to human costs (Rice & Malen, 2003), sensemaking (Weick, 1995, 2005, & 2007), and Kübler-Ross’s Grief Construct (1969) were used to guide the study. Extensive in-depth interviews were conducted with six selected principal participants to explore their experiences of reassignment.
The major themes that emerged from the data analysis were (a) costs of reassignment associated with RTTT policy implementation, (b) principal critique of this type of policy approach, and (c) the sensemaking journey of each principal impacted by reassignment. This study found that reassignment had substantial impacts on principals, their critiques of the policy included: (a) unintended consequences; (b) the number of years required to successfully turn around a low-performing school; (c) lack of alignment with good practice in schools; (d) SIG grants’ failure to demonstrate notable benefits to students; (e) the mistake of funding education through competitive means; and (f) the importance of political action and principal “voice” in shaping education policy.
However, over time, the participants were able to resume a sense of normalcy in their work.
The following four major conclusions from this study can be stated: (a) RTTT is a draconian approach to education reform and its costs outweigh the benefits; (b) RTTT policy’s restrictive requirements were seen as unfair and left little choice for districts; (c) principal “voice” is a critical component in education reform; and (d) conceptual frames of Rice and Malen (2003), Weick (1995, 2005, & 2007), and the Kübler-Ross Grief Construct (1969) describe participant’s experiences.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
They should all run for office … delicious irony in that dish …
I can tell you how it impacted talented teachers and one caring administrator who were “displaced” after Fremont High was reconstituted in 2010. A few landed on their feet, some lost their careers and when the rest went to interview were treated like pariahs because we had come from a “reconstituted” school and golly gee something must be wrong with us. But the displaced teachers included former AP teachers, tv writers and producers who were now English teachers and other extremely talented individuals. We were subjected to age discrimination (“We don’t use DITTOS here,” I was told in one interview) I did manage -after two marginal positions- to land a great position four years later. I know how these principals feel.
The irony is I now have more work than I can handle because no one is going into teaching anymore. That means my regular day job, night school, home school and summer school. Chew on that, reformers!!
Interesting development!
Here in Indiana our “lovely” governor has – can you believe this – changed his mind and teachers will have less accountability
our newspaper states: “Don’t penalize teachers for schools’ lower ISTEP scores”.
INCREDIBLE. Let us see how much this carries through with our state dept. of education.
BUT
In INDIANA? This much of a change?
Unbelievable.
RTTT also known as, if the food doesn’t taste good, just stir it up more.
Academic whistleblowing. Gotta love it. And don’t get me started on SIG grants. More work for teachers with no extra pay.
Thank you Diane for bringing this important research to your blog. Principals across the nation were negatively impacted by Race to the Top implementation, and it is important to tell our lived experiences so that history doesn’t repeat itself.
Just for clarification, I was “reassigned”, not fired in 2010. The participants in the study were all also “reassigned”, not fired. However, as you will note in my dissertation, the experience of reassignment was devastating on many levels.
Thank you for clarifying the terminology. Although I am sure many educators who were reassigned would have liked to tell someone where to shove their reassignment, being fired does a whole ‘nother number on your professional standing in your own and others’ eyes.