Doctoral Candidates: Nadine Gaujean

Reconstitution: A Case Study of the Principalship from the Perspective of Teachers

Dissertation Summary

Over the last decade or so, schools have become bankrupt. They have become a battleground for school reform as politicians and educators desperately seek to find answers. The problems are multifaceted: the curriculum is outdated, teachers are unable to be certified because they fail to pass the national teachers' exam and students' scores on standardized tests have gone from bad to worse. And what's even worse, students are graduating from high school unable to fill out a job application at McDonalds. Parents, disappointed with school performance, are bombarding superintendents and demanding accountability. And teachers are being blamed for everything.

One of the proposed solutions to this crisis is reconstitution. Reconstitution is one of the latest reforms to hit schools. It is being implemented in many cities across the nation such as Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Cleveland, Houston, Baltimore and Kentucky. Reconstitution is defined as a situation where: "an agent, external to the school, responds to persistently low student performance by removing and replacing the school leadership and at least a portion of the teaching staff." In other words, a school disbands its entire faculty and re-staffs with new hires, including the principal and other administrative staff.

However, reconstitution is still at its infancy stage and there are many unanswered questions. One of these questions this dissertation seeks to answer is: what is the role of the principal in this massive effort to turn around these low-performing schools? This dissertation will look specifically at the role of principals, from the perspective of teachers, in reconstituted schools in Prince George's County Public Schools in Maryland.

Bio

Nadine Gaujean is a doctoral candidate in Education Administration and Policies at the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She received her Master's degree in Secondary Science and a Lifetime Teaching Certificate from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. Gaujean was pre-med at Wellesley College where she received her B.A. in Sociology with a minor in Black Studies.

Gaujean is Haitian-American. She currently teaches Science to eighth graders at Thurgood Marshall Middle School in Prince George's County, Maryland. She previously taught Chemistry and Physics for three years at Howard High School in Wilmington, Delaware.

Gaujean is very successful in her teaching due to her philosophy: "It is not simply that every child can learn but that every child is important. I have an open door policy. Students know that they can come to me with just about any problem. I develop a relationship with students and with the class as a whole. I bring students' world into the classroom. My classroom becomes a galaxy that we put together at the beginning of each school year. Everyone is a star that actively contributes to making sure the galaxy does not die."