Dive Brief:

• Ashley Croft got her bachelors from Vanderbilt University's Peabody College of Education, her masters in educational leadership from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and has six years of teaching experience under her belt (including being recognized by the Tennessee Education Association as the 2013 Distinguished Educator of the Year), but a Tennessee law prohibits the accomplished educator from becoming a principal in the state.
• According to the 2009 law, in order to become licensed as a principal in Tennessee, candidates must have attended an approved in-state college or university masters program or have at least three years experience as a principal.
• Croft and her sister Melissa recently took aim at the rule by launching an online petition on Change.org, with the goal of getting legislators to change the stringent rule.

Dive Insight:

While the law was put into place to keep out candidates who came from out-of-state diploma mills like the online Walden University, the reality is that it has far more negative consequences when very qualified educators, such as Croft, are being barred from leadership positions. A much more effective (albeit perhaps less efficient) process would be leaving it on school boards and administrators to weigh out a potential principal candidate's qualifications. Ideally, they can determine if a candidate has the goods, as opposed to continuing a policy that puts up hard-to-traverse barriers.