catalyst-chicago.org

Everyone has agreed for a long time that the kinds of checklists used throughout the country for teacher evaluation accomplish nothing. Teachers get a questionable rating—in Chicago, 91 percent were rated superior or excellent in 2007-08—and no information to help them improve their craft. In some cases, they don't even get observed. In the mid-1990s, the Chicago Teachers Union and Board of Education agreed to explore a reform, called peer review, then being used in Rochester, N.Y., and Cincinnati and Toledo, Ohio. However, that agreement quietly expired with the death of then CTU President Jacqueline Vaughn. Now, talk of it is making a comeback.