Construction industry is one of the major players in economy of every country. However, many projects in developing countries like Ethiopia experience low performance in terms of the major constraints such as time, cost, quality and safety. The persistent poor quality of on-going and finished projects, unmet deadlines, cost overrun and unsafe practices of local contractors in construction projects has contributed to the perception that the local contractors are inefficient. Hence, this study focuses on assessing the performance level of local private contractors on public educational building projects in Amhara region. The study comprised a desk review of Twenty Eight public educational building projects supervised by ADSWE, from Bureau of Education and ADSWE office. In addition, the desk study was supported by personally administered questionnaires. Findings of the study reveals that 136.52% average delay and 24.71% average cost overrun were encountered by the projects under study. The survey also resulted in 49.83% of the projects not meeting the specification of quality. With regards to safety performance, all the private local contractors participated on projects under the study were found to be very poor. The top five factors which are found to be with greater frequency of occurrence and severe impact on time performance are: high competition in bids, low financial status of the contractor, not deploying machineries as per the contract and approved schedule, not purchasing and stocking construction materials ahead of schedule and not employing sufficient professionals with the required qualification and experience. The top five important factors affecting cost performance are found to be: offering low price to win a bid; inadequacy of finance; in effectiveness in financial planning and scheduling; low productivity of manpower; and poor management of manpower, material and equipment. The top five important factors affecting quality performance are found to be: use of poor quality construction materials, poor quality of workmanship, not conducting material tests as per the contract, inappropriate storage of construction materials and lack of defect preventive measures.The top five important factors affecting safety performance are found to be: lack of budget for safety, not providing trainings, not employing safety officer, lack of safety motivation and absence of safety policy. All the projects under study have been awarded to the least bidders, who fulfilled the legal requirements, without considering their technical capacity. Hence, contractors develop an attitude of compensating the profit they lost in low bid system by not employing sufficient qualified professionals; not deploying the required construction equipment and by compromising quality and safety. This has negatively contributed for the performance of contractors. Major recommendations of this study include: Contractors should change their attitudes on making profit by compromising quality of the work, improve their financial problem due to improper utilization of their advance payments, provide reasonable cost estimation for bids, employ sufficient competent personnel, deploy the required construction equipment, improve their quality performance and allocate budget for creating safe working environment.