Concern Over Changing Teacher Evaluations
For the first time next year, thousands of Chicago Public Schools teachers will be evaluated based partly on how well their students are doing academically. Many fear they will face dismissal if the standards are not applied fairly.
“It’s going to make people really angry,” said Ruth Resnick, a librarian at O’Keefe Elementary School, who spoke last week at a public forum about carrying out a new state law that changes how teachers, principals, librarians and other staff are graded.
But state and district leaders say the new evaluations will be better than the decades-old system now in use. They say more thoughtful and effective evaluations will not only increase student achievement, but also provide teachers with better feedback for how to improve.
Despite low graduation rates, test scores and other measures of student performance in the district, more than
An Unusual Library Finds a New Home
On a recent Saturday afternoon in Humboldt Park, a small band of volunteers scrambled to put the finishing touches on their library’s new home — the sixth in as many years for the Read/Write Library, Chicago’s largest depository of grass-roots printed materials.
“After all the trials and tribulations we’ve had, we’re cashing in our space karma,” said Nell Taylor, the founder and executive director of the all-volunteer, donation-financed library, which officially reopened on Friday. Since its founding in 2006, the library has been a perennial refugee, but Taylor said she believes that she has finally found a safe haven: a century-old, two-story yellow brick building on a quiet stretch of California Avenue.
Formerly known as the Chicago Underground Library, Read/Write rejects the selectivity of traditional libraries and
Cataloguing Chicago’s Cultural Landscape
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