State Policies on Principal Evaluation: Trends in a Changing Landscape. TQ Center Policy-to-Practice Brief

This brief describes a new wave of state legislation, which emphasizes individual principal accountability as part of a broader educator talent-management strategy. The brief provides a snapshot of new state-level policy on principal evaluation and describes reasons for policy change as represented in state policy language and trends in policy content. These descriptions are drawn from the "National Comprehensive Center on Teacher Quality's State Principal Evaluation Policy" database (http://resource.tqsource.org/StateEvalDB). The thematic analysis was informed by the guidelines for principal evaluation policy implementation, as described by Clifford, Hansen, and Wraight (2012). The state-level data analyzed was limited to the states that have won Race to the Top (RTTT) funds in rounds one, two, and three, with the exception of Hawaii, which has yet to develop its principal evaluation system. As early implementers of updated principal evaluation policies, states that have won RTTT funds tend to have more data on their evaluation systems and be further along in implementing their principal evaluation systems than other states, at least partially because of the federally monitored timelines. In addition, these states have served as models of challenges that can arise in implementing principal evaluation systems and, in many cases, have identified possible solutions to these challenges. (Contains 2 tables and 10 footnotes.)