Today, efforts are underway across the country to transform teacher evaluation into a useful tool for improving teaching and learning. These efforts are supported by state statutes as well as by improvements in state and local data systems and the development of new student assessments. In 2015, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) reported that only five states "have no formal state policy requiring that teacher evaluations take objective measures of student achievement into account in evaluating teacher effectiveness" (NCTQ 2015, ii). In addition, state and local efforts to design and implement teacher evaluation systems have been supported by federal resources appropriated through several programs, including the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (under the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act"), Race to the Top (RTT), the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), and the Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund. The 2015 enactment of the "Every Student Succeeds Act" ("ESSA") maintains a federal priority of ensuring that all students have access to high-quality educators. States that elect to use Title II, Part A funds to develop, improve, or provide assistance to local educational agencies (LEAs) to design and support the implementation of teacher, principal, or other school leader evaluation must describe in their state plans how they will use student growth and other measures of educator performance to provide clear, timely, and useful feedback to teachers, principals, or other school leaders. This study provides descriptive information on the design and early implementation of teacher evaluation systems in eight local school districts. This exploratory study is intended to help other districts and states learn from the experiences of these eight districts to inform future research on the effects of teacher evaluation systems on teacher professional practice and student performance. [For the summary, see ED613363.]