| Summary: | As a result of the federal grant competition and policy initiative known as Race to the Top (RTTT), states began an examination and reform of the methods by which they evaluated teachers. Upon examination of the historical results of a multitude of evaluation systems, it was revealed that the majority of teachers score in the upper echelons of their performance reviews, in sharp contrast to the level of academic achievement or academic growth of students of US students.
After many reforms and the implementation of new teacher evaluation systems, such as the Compass system in Louisiana, the same positive skew that historically existed was once again found in the current teacher scores. In Louisiana, principals in almost half of the school districts did not rate a single teacher as ineffective. This phenomenon was most pronounced in rural school districts.
From the testimonies of principals in rural school districts, principals allowed other pressing concerns, namely the context of the rural environment and the culture of their school, to influence their scoring decisions when evaluating teachers.
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