Bill Kerlina won a plum assignment when he was hired away from Montgomery County in July 2009 to become a principal in Northwest Washington. Phoebe Hearst Elementary was a small, high-performing school, right across the street from Sidwell Friends.

He grew to love its students, teachers and — for the most part — its parents.

“If I could lift that school up and put it in a functional school system, it would be perfect,” he said.

Instead, he said, the dysfunction he encountered in D.C. public schools led him to quit this month, fed up and burned out.

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Kerlina taught grade school in Montgomery, rising to assistant principal at Takoma Park Elementary. By 2009, he felt ready to move up, but principal turnover was low in the county. Kerlina was also intrigued by then-Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee’s vow to close the black-white achievement gap. He joined a contingent of Montgomery educators who signed on with Rhee, including Dawn Ellis, who left as Murch Elementary principal this month.

Kerlina said his interview with Rhee was brief. She quizzed him about reading scores at Takoma Park and asked what he would do for scores at Hearst, where reading proficiency on the citywide test in 2009 was 80 percent and math proficiency was 92 percent. He promised to at least hold them steady. But they fell, along with elementary scores throughout the city. Reading proficiency dipped five percentage points in 2010, and math proficiency fell to 67 percent.

Kerlina signed on just as Rhee was rolling out the IMPACT evaluation system, which called for five classroom observations to assess criteria such as clarity of presentation, content knowledge and ability to teach children with varying skill levels. Some teachers would be held accountable for student growth on standardized tests. Those with poor evaluations were subject to dismissal.

It was a major change. Kerlina said he was surprised when he heard it would not be tried on a pilot basis, which was standard practice in Montgomery. He said he came to believe that the initiative offered virtually no provisions to help teachers improve.

“The reform, in my opinion, is getting rid of people,” he said.