Supporting teachers and principals by recognizing strong performance and helping them grow is more urgent than ever.
Results of the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress reveal alarming results: Since 2019, scores declined substantially for all students, while disparities widened for students already most affected by opportunity gaps.1 As districts and states help students recover in the wake of a global pandemic, supporting teachers and principals by recognizing strong performance, and helping them grow and improve where necessary, is more urgent than ever.
Strong teacher and principal evaluation systems have the potential to help teachers and principals improve their practice, to exit teachers who are perennially ineffective, to retain teachers who are effective and learn from them, and to increase the overall quality of a district’s teacher workforce.2
As states respond to widespread concerns (both real and perceived) about teacher shortages and resignations, evaluation systems also have a role to play: Schools need access to fair, valid evaluation systems to help identify and retain highly effective teachers and principals, as well as to support those who are struggling.
As is true of all policies, implementation matters. A recent working paper from the Annenberg Institute generated disappointment and reflection after researchers found that, on the whole, states’ changes to evaluation systems have not yielded the student outcomes they had hoped for.3 These findings stood in stark contrast to the well-documented success that systems like those in Dallas, Denver, the District of Columbia, Chicago, and the state of Tennessee have had building strong evaluation systems that directly contributed to improved student learning and higher teacher quality.4
But a closer look at Annenberg’s research gives reason for optimism. Researchers found bright spots across the country (obscured by the larger trend) where exemplary evaluation systems made a significant impact on student achievement. These exemplary evaluation systems had a number of evidence-based practices in common, including the use of multiple measures to evaluate teachers’ effectiveness (particularly student growth and student surveys), meaningful differentiation between teachers, regular and sustained opportunities for observation and feedback, guaranteed written feedback, and alignment with professional learning.5 These findings add to the evidence that evaluation, done well, can make a difference for students and educators.6
Given the importance of state policies to set the conditions for successful evaluation systems, NCTQ has regularly collected data, starting in 2011, to chart states’ progress in adopting evidence-based evaluation practices. In this report, we analyze statewide policies for teacher and principal evaluations in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, using data collected in fall of 2021 and verified by states in early 2022, in order to answer the following questions:
- What role does the state play in teacher and principal evaluation design?
- What components are included in a teacher or principal’s evaluation?
- When, where, how, and by whom are evaluations conducted?
- Are evaluations used for support and improvement?