A Thirty State Analysis of Teacher Supervision and Evaluation Systems in the ESSA Era

We analyzed teacher supervision and evaluation policy systems in 30 states since the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015 in the United States (US). This qualitative study of state ESSA policy documents and legislation examined how teacher supervision and evaluation systems (TSES) models have been developed under ESSA, specifically regarding how the construction of TSES models conflated formative feedback with summative evaluation. Despite evolving federal-level and state-level education accountability policies spurred by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001, we argue that TSES systems are influenced by state-level historical political culture (Elazar, 1994; Fowler, 2013), workplace behaviorism (Hazi, 2019), decision-making structures (Hazi & Arredondo Rucinski, 2009; Ruff, 2019), and policy rationalism (Louis et al., 2008; Orr, 2007). Data were analyzed inductively (Wolcott, 2009) to investigate how 30 states developed TSES models and from this we analyze the messages conveyed about improvement. Thus, while ESSA intended to provide states and local districts with more political control to develop and implement TSES models, our analyses shows how ESSA has extended and reinforced state-level TSES policy development and reduced districts’ local control and authority to supervise and evaluate instruction.