Quick Hits for 11.18.2010

Quick Hits is a daily compilation of essential education news stories, blog posts, and video clips that Education Sector team members are reading or viewing.

• A New Brookings Institution Report on the Important Role of Value-Added Teacher Evaluation: “When teacher evaluation that incorporates value-added is compared against an abstract ideal, it can easily be found wanting in that it provides only a fuzzy signal. But when it is compared to performance information in other fields or to evaluations of teachers based on other sources of information, it looks respectable and appears to provide the best signal we’ve got.” (Brookings Institution)

• Renee Rybak Lang on How to Effectively Live-Tweet Events: “And although there’s no “right way” to live-tweet, not everyone is great at it either and it can sometimes come off haphazardly.” (NTEN)

• Michael Kirst on a Recent McKinsey Report That Details Five Strategies for Increasing College Attainment: “Increasing the proportion of the adult population with a higher-education degree is critical to creating opportunities for individuals and sustaining the US’ economic growth. Yet college attainment rates in the US have remained nearly flat for the past 10 years, whereas they have continued to rise in most industrialized nations. Increasing college attainment and degree production in the US will be even more challenging in a time of constrained resources.” (The College Puzzle)

• Stephen Sawchuk on the Updated Baltimore Teachers Contract That Passed Yesterday: “Baltimore’s teaching corps just ratified, by a 1,902-1,045 vote, a new contract that does away with many of the features of its traditional “step-and-lane” salary schedule in favor of one that puts a heavier emphasis on teacher performance. … The contract is important in the larger national conversation about teacher pay, too, because to date most experiments with pay have been with additive features, like bonuses, rather than changes to the base-pay salary grid.” (Teacher Beat)