[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Goal setting in Missouri's Model Evaluation is the central focus of this research. Years of legislation increased the federal presence in public education and made accountability a household term for educators. The direct piece of policy that connects this research to is Missouri's ESEA Flexibility Waiver. The waiver established goals that would bypass the rigorous mandates of No Child Left Behind but would still ensure high-quality programs within Missouri schools. Effective leadership and instruction were a core goal of the waiver and established the seven principles of effective evaluation for Missouri public schools. The seven principles of effective evaluation were to serve as the guiding principles for educator evaluation in Missouri by the 2014-15 academic year. Missouri's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education created the Missouri Model Evaluation System, offering districts a premade evaluation system. The model system utilizes goal setting within growth guides to provide evaluation participants a focus for both evaluation and professional growth. The four moderators of Locke and Latham's Goal Setting Theory serve as the conceptual framing of this research. These moderators, or variables, are goal specificity, goal commitment, goal difficulty, and goal feedback. The likelihood of goal achievement increases when the moderators are considered during implementation.