Download or read book School Principals' Reassignment Under Race to the Top written by Carole Meyer and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 Kubler-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 Kubler-Ross Grief Construct (1969) describe participant's experiences.