The effect of major reforms to teacher evaluation systems

 Federal incentives and requirements under the Obama administration spurred states to adopt major reforms to their teacher evaluation systems. This study examines the effects of these reforms on student achievement and attainment at a national scale by exploiting the staggered timing of implementation across states. 

The authors find precisely estimated null effects, on average, that rule out impacts as small as 0.015 standard deviation for achievement and 1 percentage point for high school graduation and college enrollment. They also find little evidence that the effect of teacher evaluation reforms varied by system design rigor, specific design features or student and district characteristics. 

The authors highlight five factors that may have undercut the efficacy of teacher evaluation reforms at scale: political opposition, the decentralized structure of U.S. public education, capacity constraints, limited generalizability, and the lack of increased teacher compensation to offset the non-pecuniary costs of lower job satisfaction and security.