A review of the literature reveals that although effective personnel evaluation is critical to the improvement of educational institutions, productive evaluation policies and procedures are rarely used currently. The low quality of many of the procedures now used is a major reason why efforts to base employment and salary decisions on evaluations are resisted by the personnel to be evaluated. Programs designed to increase teachers' accountability could impair educational improvement if sound evaluation components are not built in. Several public, private, and professional agencies have been working to develop standards for evaluation programs, and promising results are beginning to emerge. Thirty-one references are cited. (PGD)