Morning Announcements: September 1, 2010

The New York Times takes a look at value-added modeling, a method to calculate the value teachers add to their students’ achievement, based on changes in test scores from year to year and how the students perform compared with others in their grade.

An article in Washington Monthly takes a look at College Dropout Factories. To read more about high school dropout factories, check out the Alliance’s brief, Prioritizing the Nation’s Lowest-Performing High Schools.

In Massachusetts the first virtual school in the state to serve students from kindergarten through high school opens on Thursday.

In North Dakota, the Commission on Education Improvement considers an alternative teacher compensation system that would be based on multiple factors, such as (but not limited to) pay for hard-to-staff positions, added knowledge or skills/professional development, student educational growth or added responsibilities like mentoring, coaching or instructional leadership.

The New York Education Department sent school districts a memo strongly recommending that they not ask for information that might reveal the immigration status of enrolling students.

The Obama administration announced a $1.8 billion agreement to help Louisiana’s Recovery School District and Orleans Parish School Board to rebuild and rehabilitate buildings that were damaged by the floodwaters as a result of Hurricane Katrina.