Many states only recently incorporated indicators of student achievement into teacher evaluation systems for Non-Tested Subjects and Grades (NTSG). This study examines how practices related to the inclusion of student achievement measures vary across states as to the discretion left to districts in defining and implementing evaluation systems for teachers in NTSG. For each state, information about current practices was obtained through document analysis and, when provided, feedback from state department representatives. We find substantial variation in state polices. Some states - notably those that received Race to the Top funding - afford districts with considerably less local control than others. Results presented here provide rich descriptive information and highlight the need for future studies related to local control and teacher evaluation.

Modest correlations between teacher-assigned grades and external assessments of academic achievement ( = .40-.60) have led many educational stakeholders to deem grades subjective and unreliable. However, theoretical and methodological challenges, such as construct misalignment, data unavailability and sample unrepresentativeness, limit the generalisability of previous findings. We overcome these challenges by exploiting rich, population-wide data from the National Registries in Norway ( = 511,858), where state regulations require close construct alignment between grades and external exams. Correlations between lower-secondary education final grades and external exam results ( = .64-.86) suggest that grades are better measures of academic achievement than previously acknowledged. Dominance analyses and multivariate regression analyses indicate that external exam results are the best predictor of grades in the same subject. However, our results also indicate that state regulations and quality assurance systems cannot completely eradicate potential sources of discrepancy.