Districts Tying Principal Reviews to Test Scores

Nikki Hudson, left, the academic coordinator at Lida Hooe Elementary School in Dallas, compares notes with Principal Linda Saenz during a principal-evaluation session.

—Mark Graham for Education Week

More and more districts are factoring student test scores into personnel reviews

By Jaclyn Zubrzycki

A growing number of school districts—including large ones like those in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Hawaii—have become recent converts to new principal-evaluation systems that tie school leaders' appraisals to student test scores.

As of this school year, student achievement accounts for 40 percent to 50 percent of principals' evaluations in each of those school systems, while district leaders in a number of other places are preparing to make similar changes in coming school years.

The switch to the new-breed evaluation systems comes on the heels of efforts nationwide to incorporate student-achievement measures into teachers' evaluations. For principals, the move is being prompted by U.S. Department of Education grant programs such as Race to the Top , which requires states or districts to tie principal effectiveness "in significant part" to growth in student achievement, and by No Child Left Behind waivers, which allow states flexibility on some requirements of the federal law in exchange for adopting certain policies,...