Can Evaluation Promote Teacher Development? Principals' Views and Experiences Implementing Observation and Feedback Cycles

New teacher evaluation systems have expanded the role of principals as instructional leaders. We study principals’ perspectives on evaluation and their experiences implementing observation and feedback cycles. Based on interviews with a stratified random sample of 24 principals in an urban district, we find that most principals viewed professional growth as the primary purpose of evaluation. However, observing all teachers multiple times undercut the depth of feedback principals could provide and resulted in infrequent in-person conversations. Expectations to provide feedback across grade-levels and content-areas led to a narrow focus on general pedagogical practices. Principals proposed four broad solutions to these challenges: strategically targeting evaluations, reducing operational responsibilities, hiring instructional coaches, and providing principal training. *Correspondence can be sent to Matthew Kraft at [email protected]. We would like to thank Pam Grossman, Susan Moore Johnson, Stefanie Reinhorn, and Nicole Simon for their helpful comments on the paper.