Multiple Measures of Teacher Effectiveness in Hillsborough County Public Schools: The Role of Principals

In the spring of 2009, when the leaders in Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) in Tampa, FL embarked on an ambitious plan to change teacher evaluation, they knew the role and evaluations of school principals would also have to be transformed. The new teacher evaluation required principals to spend much more time in the classroom observing and analyzing instruction. But, the old principal’s evaluation relied on a vague checklist of school leadership standards that were difficult to link to specific professional development. Moreover, the principals’ evaluation considered only one person’s perspective, had minimal variation, and was weakly correlated with student achievement. Through a collaborative process led by Superintendent MaryEllen Elia and Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association President Jean Clements, the district concurrently crafted new teachers’ and principals’ evaluations that included multiple measures of effectiveness and reinforced each other’s key components. The goals were to continue to emphasize the principal as an instructional leader and give principals the tools they needed to evaluate and guide teachers’ instruction.