Using Multiple Measures to Evaluate Principals

In recent years, states and school districts have developed new strategies for measuring principals’ contributions to student achievement. Many districts are incorporating teacher and student feedback surveys into these evaluation systems as one measure of school leaders’ success in establishing school conditions that promote better teaching and learning. In collaboration with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and the Regional Education Lab Midwest, we set out to learn whether including results from these surveys strengthened the link between principals’ evaluation ratings and the achievement gains of their students. We found that adding student and teacher voices to the mix, especially their feedback in the area of instructional leadership, did strengthen the link between the evaluation ratings and schoolwide student achievement outcomes in math and in a math-reading composite but not in reading alone.