Teachers to Conduct Peer Reviews in Chicago

A program that puts teachers in charge of evaluating and helping some of their own will get a trial run in Chicago starting next fall.

If the pilot proves a success, Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan wants to see it go systemwide, a spokesman for the 424,000-student district said. Such a move would be by far the largest expansion of a model pioneered in Toledo, Ohio, by its school district and teachers’ union in 1981 and continued there since then.

The expensive arrangement—which uses master teachers who have been released from classroom duties to oversee and help improve the work of new and poorly performing teachers—has spread slowly, even if variations are included. Besides Toledo, where such peer review has long been viewed as a success, forms of the plan have been adopted in Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio; Rochester, N.Y.; Minneapolis; and at least two midsize California districts. Most notably in recent years, the 139,000-student Montgomery County district in Maryland instituted such...