The Accuracy of Principals’ Judgments of Teacher Performance

This is a study of the accuracy of principals’ judgments of teacher performance as predictors of teacher effectiveness. For each of 46 elementary school principals, correlations were obtained between judgments of effectiveness of teachers in three roles and gains of students in their classes in arithmetic and reading. The mean accuracy of judgments of teacher effectiveness in helping students acquire fundamental knowledge was .20, and there were no significant differences in the accuracy of judgments made by different principals. There was evidence the judgments of teachers of grades 3 and 5 were more accurate than judgments of teachers of grades 2, 4, and 6. Possible explanations of the low accuracy of the judgments are discussed.