How Do Schools Respond to State Policies on Teacher Evaluation?

In 2010, the Louisiana leg­is­la­ture passed a bill requir­ing that all Louisiana pub­lic school teach­ers receive an annu­al eval­u­a­tion con­sist­ing of two equal­ly-weight­ed com­po­nents: mea­sures of stu­dent per­for­mance growth and obser­va­tions of teach­ing. Reg­u­la­tions passed the fol­low­ing year allowed local dis­tricts and char­ter schools to either adopt the state’s eval­u­a­tion sys­tem and obser­va­tion tool, called Com­pass, or sub­mit a waiv­er to use their own. This study exam­ines how eight New Orleans schools — both char­ter and dis­trict-run — respond­ed to the new state pol­i­cy and what orga­ni­za­tion­al fac­tors influ­enced their respons­es. We draw the fol­low­ing con­clu­sions: The schools var­ied wide­ly in their response to the teacher eval­u­a­tion law. Some schools react­ed by reflect­ing on instruc­tion­al prac­tice, while oth­ers either com­plied with the law or act­ed strate­gi­cal­ly. Only three of eight schools engaged pri­mar­i­ly in reflec­tive prac­tice, pro­duc­ing and using eval­u­a­tion results to think about instruc­tion and ways to improve it. Schools’ respons­es did not appear relat­ed to their gov­er­nance mod­els, autho­riz­ers, or gen­er­al lev­els of auton­o­my, but oth­er fac­tors seemed to pro­mote more learn­ing-cen­tered approach­es to imple­men­ta­tion: Schools that mod­i­fied the state-rec­om­mend­ed eval­u­a­tion sys­tem were often more reflec­tive in their respons­es, sug­gest­ing that the flex­i­bil­i­ty to mod­i­fy eval­u­a­tion pol­i­cy may increase orga­ni­za­tion­al learn­ing, as it pro­vides oppor­tu­ni­ties for cus­tomiza­tion and greater teacher buy-in. * Shared lead­er­ship and struc­tured col­lab­o­ra­tion around eval­u­a­tion at the school lev­el also appeared to pro­mote a more reflec­tive approach to eval­u­a­tion and reduce the bur­den on admin­is­tra­tors to observe, eval­u­ate, pro­vide feed­back to, and sup­port teach­ers. As with most poli­cies, the effects depend on pol­i­cy design and imple­men­ta­tion. Giv­en the impor­tance of effec­tive instruc­tion, imple­men­ta­tion of teacher eval­u­a­tion may be sig­nif­i­cant for dri­ving stu­dent outcomes.

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