IMPLEMENTING TEACHER EVALUATION SYSTEMS How Principals Make Sense of Complex Artifacts to Shape Local Instructional Practice 1

This study examines how local school leaders make sense of complex programs designed to evaluate teachers and teaching. New standards-based teacher evaluation policies promise to provide school leaders and teachers with a common framework that can serve as a basis for improving teaching and learning in schools (Danielson & McGreal, 2000; Odden & Kelley, 2002). However, implementation research suggests that the ways in which local actors make sense of and use such policies determines the nature of the changes that actually occur in schools (Desimone, 2002; Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, 2002). In this paper, case studies of schools in a large school district are used to examine school-level implementation of a standards-based teacher evaluation system. Specifically, we examine the ways in which school and district leaders emphasize and select from the many features of a teacher evaluation framework in the implementation process. We then discuss the ways in which key features of the process were co-opted, ignored, or adapted in accordance with school context, and we point to how the resulting teacher evaluation practices help to create conditions for more substantive conversations about reforming teaching practice. Introduction While it is generally acknowledged that teachers exert great influence over the improvement of student learning (Darling-Hammond & Ball, 1997; Wright, Horn & Sanders, 1997), the role that school leaders play in shaping system capacity for successful teaching