Since 2009, the United States (US) federal government has spearheaded a nationwide teacher evaluation reform effort, encouraging states to change their process of evaluating teachers with a focus on evaluations that better distinguished teacher performance as well as provide better information on what makes a high-quality teacher (US Department of Education, 2009). The US Department of Education enacted this reform through the Race to the Top (RTTT) initiative and by granting many states Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) waivers if they changed their teacher evaluation systems to align with ESEA priorities, such as evaluating teachers in part based on student assessment data. These two levers are the primary reason that since 2009 more than two-thirds of states have made significant changes to how teachers are evaluated (The Center for Public Education, 2014). However, the passage of the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) allows for an increased role of states and districts in shaping teacher evaluation policies and teacher evaluation systems. All of these changes have the potential to impact how states, districts, schools, and individual principals make sense of and use teacher evaluation policies and systems. Organizational and individual sensemaking of teacher evaluation policies and systems is of particular importance due to the high-stakes most states attach these policies and systems (e.g. using these policies and systems for the hiring, firing, and tenure decisions of teachers). Because school principals play a pivotal role in how teacher evaluations look in practice, I argue policymakers, researchers, and practitioners must better understand how principals think about and ultimately enact these complex policies and systems. In this dissertation, I answer the following research questions: 1) How do principals' cognitive schemas influence how principals come to understand and implement teacher evaluation policies and systems?; 2) What role does external pressure play in shaping principal learning and enactment of teacher evaluations policies and systems?; and 3) In what ways, if any, do principals' experience and external pressure interact during the implementation process? This exploratory multi-case study examines data from school principals (N=12) in Michigan, including interviews (n=36), observations (n=24), and questionnaires (n=12) collected in 2016 and 2017. Additionally, teacher interviews (n=12) and specific teacher evaluation district documents inform this study. Results show: (1) principals in high-pressure environments perceive a pressure to differentiate their teachers' final evaluation ratings, which typically results in these principals rating their teachers more critically than their peers who work in low-pressure environments; (2) principals with high-levels of experience engage in situational leadership, while principals with low-levels of experience engage in relational leadership, which impacts how teacher evaluation policies and systems look in practice; and (3) principals with high-levels of experience are less likely than their more inexperienced peers to use previous teacher data (evaluations/test scores) when evaluating teachers. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.
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