Current procedures to evaluate teaching are inadequate, inaccurate, and neither improve teaching directly nor incentivize teaching improvement. Effective teaching is difficult to assess and current mechanisms are often nebulous without established standards. Because of poor evaluation structures, faculty may not be aware of the need to change their teaching practice or how to effect such change. It is the purpose of this work to establish a definition of what constitutes effective teaching, provide a framework that considers multiple facets of teaching and is flexible enough to accommodate different approaches, and suggest a tool with which to evaluate teaching.