The top-down approach to reforming a long-broken component of school talent management was rife with problems. While many educators seemed to get behind improved evaluation systems, few felt comfortable with the stakes. Including students’ standardized test performance as a factor in teacher evaluation raised serious concerns. According to audits conducted in two states, only about 25 percent of courses taught in K-12 schools include a standardized assessment usable in a value-added metric. That leaves nearly three-quarters of educators with assessments of student learning that must be tracked and measured in a less standardized – and perhaps less reliable – way.

Educators’ reactions to evaluation systems varied consistently with the assessments considered in their evaluations. A 2016 report from the Institute for Education Sciences reported that teachers whose evaluations included student test scores were more than twice as likely to report dissatisfaction with their evaluation system. States and districts addressed these concerns by adopting alternative metrics for student outcomes, such as Student Learning Objective systems, and reducing the role of assessment data within evaluation rubrics by including multiple years of outcomes or lowering their relative weight in the final evaluation rating.

School leadership also posed challenges. Both evaluative capacity (the ability to conduct observations that accurately assess performance strengths and weaknesses) and relational trust (the extent to which principals developed an environment and individual trust relationships with teachers) affect the efficacy of an evaluation system. The same Schools and Staffing Survey employed by the Institute for Educational Sciences report uncovered a tight correlation between teachers’ perceptions of principal leadership and their satisfaction with the system used to evaluate them. The imperative of building evaluative capacity, coupled with the challenge of implementing evaluation programs, has left principals overwhelmed and underprepared. A 2015 brief from the National Association of Elementary School Principals and National Association of Secondary School Principals even called for more training and reduced requirements for observational components based upon findings from a 2013 survey of principals.

Despite support for replacing ineffective and seldom used satisfactory checklists with new evaluation systems that can provide timely, actionable information to improve performance, the challenges of the current approach to evaluation loom large. The lack of time for high-quality implementation, diminishing resources for principal training, and poor connection with professional learning resources raise questions about the utility of these new systems and the extent to which they will continue to be a lever for improvement under future presidential administrations. At least one study demonstrated beneficial effects on the quality of a teaching force under a high-fidelity implementation of teacher and principal evaluation. Still, states and districts will be left to make independent decisions about whether to continue, build upon, or scrap their nascent educator evaluation systems. A widely unanticipated shift in executive control makes the role of the future U.S. Department of Education unclear, but the Every Student Succeeds Act provides a framework of extraordinary flexibility for states and school districts. What will drive their decisions?

One thing is certain: Teachers’ and principals’ opinions will be a primary factor. Without the political cover of accountability, state education agencies may be disinclined to maintain strong regulations around evaluation systems. States may elect to engage teachers and leaders through their mandated stakeholder input processes, which may yield critical data on the best pathway forward for evaluation systems. State leaders may also independently prioritize specific evaluation system parameters based upon a theory of action; for those whose primary lever for change is teacher talent, high-quality evaluation is an essential part of a talent management protocol. The National Center for Education Statistics may not release results from their National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS, which replaces the Schools and Staffing Survey employed in the IES study above) in time for state planning. But regardless of how states gauge teacher support, most are likely to dial back stringent educator evaluation requirements in favor of flexibility for most districts.

States and districts are also likely to take a cue from new federal language elevating the importance of professional learning for teachers and principals. For the first time, states may set aside up to 3 percent of Title II(A) funding allocations to support principal training and development. This shift signals an increased interest in the role of school leaders in developing and retaining the talent required to succeed with students. The new language also consolidates a specific definition of professional learning designed to mitigate low-quality training and drive up access to effective learning. The key to professional learning is to connect it with teachers’ demonstrated needs – which means connecting it with data collected from observation and student outcomes. Taken together, states and districts will be wise to maintain evaluation systems that provide actionable information and, ultimately, deliver on their original purpose: setting teachers (and students) up to succeed.

Taken together, the challenges of implementing more complex and higher stakes teacher and principal evaluation systems may seem to point toward most states and districts opting out, scrapping their systems and dialing back oversight altogether. However, two key countervailing forces are likely to hold evaluation systems to a consistent course and point toward modification rather than complete demolition. The first is state law. During the period in which states were vying for Race to the Top grants, numerous state legislatures passed laws requiring more sophisticated evaluation systems. Most of these laws are still in place, and supersede federal flexibility. The second is inertia. Challenging as they have been to implement, new educator evaluation systems have been in place in most states and districts for at least a few years. Repealing and replacing them requires gargantuan effort that, considering their potential if maintained and implemented well, is difficult to justify. Competing priorities under ESSA suggest that, while some may elect the nuclear option, most will opt to keep working toward evaluation systems that drive better talent management systems, better support for teachers, and better outcomes for kids.