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Tenured Principals: An Endangered Species

Second in an occasional series .

Shortly before Gwendolyn F. Elmore would have become eligible for tenure as the principal of an Atlanta elementary school in 1995, the Georgia legislature changed the rules of the game.

Starting that spring, any principal in the state who didn't already have tenure could forget about ever getting it. While Ms. Elmore says she has since grown comfortable working under one-year, renewable contracts, she doubts whether all her colleagues...