Chicago testing the waters on teacher evaluation

What makes a teacher effective in the classroom?

This past school year, 80 Chicago elementary and high schools “field-tested” a potential new framework that would help answer that question, now one of the hottest in the education world.

Called Teaching for Learning, the framework could become one part of a revamped evaluation system — mandated by the January 2010 Performance Evaluation Reform Act — that CPS is to have in place in 300 schools by 2012 and the rest of the district by 2013...