The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among New York State's APPR teacher evaluation system, poverty, attendance rates, per pupil spending, and academic achievement. The data from this study included reports on 110 school districts, over 30,000 educators and over 60,000 students from Nassau and Suffolk counties posted on the New York State Education Department's Data website. The results of this study showed that poverty had a strong negative correlation with performance on the New York State English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics assessments among students in grades 3-8. As poverty went up, performance on the State assessments went down. Poverty accounted for over 60 percent of the variance on student performance on both State assessments. The school districts' APPR teacher evaluation ratings had weak to conflicting correlations with student achievement. The school districts' percent of teachers rated "highly effective" had a positive correlation with student achievement. However, the strength of the relationship was weak, accounting for only 12.53 and 10.76 percent of the variance on student success on the English Language Arts and Mathematics examinations respectively. The school districts' percent of teachers rated "effective" had a negative correlation with student achievement. As the percent of teachers rated "effective" went up, student performance on the State assessments went down. The implications of this study suggested that legislators, State education departments, and school districts would better serve students by allocating recourses toward programs that alleviate the detrimental effects that poverty has on academic achievement.