I've worked for some wonderful principals, so I'm not looking to paint all of them with a broad brush, but think about it. Principals are minimally supervised and they control budgets, careers, their students, an entire community. The job itself inherently provides its holder with a good reputation - people just assume that anyone who has made it to being a principal is honest, intelligent, caring, etc. There really is a shortage of qualified individuals for the job, so candidates aren't vetted as thoroughly as you might think. The truth is that many principals (especially the bad ones) move around a lot from school to school and district to district. Another career path is for them to "fail up" into central office positions which is especially dangerous as it allows their poison to spread even more effectively.
As long as a principal can stay under their district's radar, usually by keeping parents happy, they can treat their employees pretty much however they wish, contract or no contract. That gives someone who craves the power to do everything their way regardless of how it effects anyone else a lot of freedom to be as abusive as they wanna be. You hear a lot about sociopathic CEOs, but they can be found in any organization, especially the ones with a strong top-down management style.
That is the problem in a nutshell, and there are few good principals now because the good ones bailed out when the "reforms" came down the pike. Now school districts are stuck with dregs.
By far the worst supervisors in the economy are school principals. The last two I had included one who was a sociopath with moronic tendencies and one who was a moron with sociopathic tendencies. Of course they both are doing better than ever at Washoe County School District.
Norway has the answer and that is for teachers to pick principals from their sites, and if the principals fail in their jobs, they are voted out by the teachers.
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I was just fired by one of those sociopaths. A colleague of mine pegged him two years ago, but I didn't believe her. Now she is doing the bobble head, "I told you so" gesture at me. Oh well, live and learn. Right?
I am sorry that happened to you, Shawn. Six years later I cannot get a regular job in education (or anything else) and am ruined economically. Meanwhile, the bum who fired me has held a succession of "jobs" in the district and has yet another principal job. Meanwhile, she was recently made principal of the Washoe Principals Association. This is as good a reason why collective bargaining should NOT be allowed for principals. They are management, after all, not rank and file.
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