The Impact of a High Stakes Teacher Evaluation System: Educator Perspectives on Accountability

The use of student achievement data to evaluate an individual teacher's effectiveness has become a new focus in educational policy. This article focuses on the underresearched teacher perception of this new policy measure. Drawing on ethnographic research procedures, this article explores how first-grade teachers in one state navigated a new high-stakes teacher evaluation system. Although the results indicate that teachers have a desire for accountability, findings also show a variety of beliefs on the validity of teacher evaluation, as well as differing applications of scoring measures across school contexts.