Using a three paper format, this study examines how policy- and school-contexts might affect teaching quality. As many researchers have shown that teachers are one of the most important factors for student learning, accountability policies that used to target schools or districts now target individual teachers. That is, we are expecting more and more from our teachers. However, it is unclear that whether current policy- and school-context support teachers properly. This dissertation, which consists of three essays, examines this question with different perspectives. The first essay investigates how teacher evaluation pressure perceived by early career teachers might affect their mathematics instruction. Drawing on observation and survey data, this essay examines whether current teacher evaluation policies conflict with ambitious mathematics instruction. As a result, early career teachers who felt a higher level of pressure related to teacher evaluation tended to be more active in using resources in their planning. However, those teachers were more likely to move further away from enacting ambitious mathematics instruction in terms of three dimensions in TRU Math scores, cognitive demand, agency, authority, and identity, and formative assessment. In other words, what teacher evaluation policies motivate teachers to do might not be aligned with ambitious mathematics instruction, and this is more salient with three dimensions of TRU Math. In terms of teacher individual level- (i.e., Mathematics Knowledge for Teaching) and school level- resources (i.e. school norms regarding mathematics instruction), only teachers' Mathematics Knowledge for Teaching (MKT) seems to have moderating effects on the association between evaluation pressure and teachers' enactment of mathematics instruction. A one unit increase in MKT made the negative effect of evaluation pressure almost doubled in two dimensions (i.e., agency, authority, and identity, and formative assessment). While social norms were expected to buffer such influence of teacher evaluation on teachers' instruction, there was no significant moderating effect of social norms at schools. In total, it is arguable that teachers made rational decisions about their mathematics instruction, and teacher evaluation policies seemed to be prioritized while teacher level-and school-level resources did not buffer the influence of teacher evaluation policies. The second essay is about the implementation and effects of teacher evaluation policies in Michigan school districts. Drawing on a loosely coupled system as a theoretical framework, this study examines whether Michigan school districts and the state government were loosely coupled in terms of teacher evaluations, what factors might have affected districts' decisions regarding teacher evaluations, and whether such policies produced any significant effects for student achievement. As a result, there was a clear variation in implementation of teacher evaluation policies, which showed loose coupling in the system: some school districts enacted the policies even before the state required them to do, while other school districts had never enacted the policies as the state mandated. The proportion of White students, fiscal resources available at the district level, student achievement, and leadership seemed to affect districts' decision-making related to teacher evaluation policies. Moreover, based on interrupted time series, the implementation of teacher evaluation policies had no significant effects on student achievement. The third essay examines how principal leadership might affect early career teachers' turnover. Although teachers' instructional practices and student achievement are important, only if enough teachers are fully committed to their positions in each school can we consider teaching quality. I conceptualized principal leadership as three aspects: instructional leadership, leadership related to student behavior management, and leadership related to creating a supportive culture. I found that principal leadership was consistently important for early career teachers' turnover for their first five years. Among the three aspects of leadership, leadership related to creating a supportive culture had a significant and negative association with teachers' leaving the first school. That is, when a principal had strong leadership in terms of creating a supportive culture among teachers, early career teachers working for the school were less likely to leave their school.
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