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Value added sounds like a sensible measure but it can deliver results which are quite unexpected. For a number of years my wife taught Spanish A level - a subject where English mother tongue students compete with many native speakers. Her very best added value was always with Spanish mother tongue students. Her very best English mother tongue students with excellent GCSEs struggled to deliver a positive residual - most of them showed a negative residual even if they scored an A grade at A level (then the highest grade available).

That kind of oddity is less likely to be a problem in mathematics and English across a broader population of students in a large city like Los Angeles, but even there I would hesitate to use value added as a prime measure of teacher performance.

Training as a teacher and I'm undecided. We are public servants and so should be accountable (if you don't like it - get another job). I know the US teaching unions, where outraged by it. I'm not sure exactly why it's seen as so insulting?

Yes it is not a perfect measure but as far as I'm aware it's the best measure we have. There are lots of examples of problems that arise with target based systems (least of which is more stress in the classroom). Humans do not behave as rational beings and there can be lots of unintended consequences that lead to kids learning less.


As a scientist I would try do a few good empirical studies, publish the scores of teachers of several schools and see if there's any improvement compared to a control group.

Yes, the resistance is justified. There are a huge number of factors affecting any performance metric you can think of. If this blog's readership growth were to slow, would that imply that its author has become less informative? Or maybe the author has become less populist but more informative. Maybe some other blog has attracted lots of readers. Maybe it's just that all those people who might ever start reading this blog are already reading it. It's impossible to disentangle.

Similarly, if a the performance of a class increases less than last year's class, that could mean that the teacher was less good this year, but it could be that a disruptive pupil joined the class, or that a few of the kids had problems at home, or that the classroom they were allocated was noisier or draughtier, or that or that the previous years' test had been marked a bit generously, etc etc.

This value-added measure probably is the best measure we have, but sadly it's still not a useful one. We need to find a better way of monitoring and incentivising performance. We also need to accept that simple measures like this are only actually simple in role-playing games, not in real life.

Martin, this is a VERY dangerous way forward. I expected better from someone with your level of knowledge and experience.

There is a vast amount of evolutionary and behavioural science based evidence that selection based on individual performance as opposed to population or group performance is a patently stupid idea. Basically all this would do is stop individual teachers helping weaker colleagues as it would now be in their interests for other teachers to be worse than them. All you would end up with is selfish back-stabbing teachers and a poor working environment.

Any action like this should focus on 'teams'. This then encourages collaborative effort and means that the good teachers have an interest in either supporting or 'outing' poor colleagues.

This is the worst type of 'bright idea' that behavioural scientist should be jumping on and denouncing. Anyone who thinks this is sensible is an idiot.

PS The same applies to bonuses and performance pay - individual rewards are just divisive. Team, department or faculty reward and promote teamwork and collective responsibility.

Martin - Bonus/performance information of senior public sector employees can and often is requested in this country under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Information Commissioner’s guidance on disclosure of employees’ salaries states that public authorities need only disclose salary information within a £5,000 band unless any of the following exceptional circumstances arise.

These are where:
• there are current controversies or credible allegations;
• there is a lack of safeguards against corruption;
• normal procedures have not been followed;
• the individual in question is paid significantly more than the usual salary for their post; or,
• the individual or individuals concerned have significant control over setting their own or other’s salaries.

n/practical_application/salaries_v1.pdf

He has taken the same stance in relation to staff bonuses. However there is a more cautious approach when it comes to performance information.

The First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) decision in Davis v IC and Olympic Delivery Authority (EA/2010/0024) concerned a request for bonus payments, performance targets and the targets levels achieved in relation to senior staff at the ODA. In coming to its decision, the Tribunal distinguished between bonus information and performance assessment information.

It ordered disclosure of certain information relating to the bonuses of senior employees of the ODA: the maximum performance-related bonuses to which the chief executive and communications director were contractually entitled, and the percentage of the maximum available bonus actually paid to certain other members of senior management.

However it decided, that details of the performance targets which individuals failed to hit to 100% satisfaction should not be disclosed. It said that in each case disclosure would involve an intrusion into an element of the individuals’ lives which, while work-related, has such a direct impact on career progression and personal self-esteem that it would only be warranted if, in addition to the matters of public interest identified, the operation of the remuneration scheme justified significant criticism.

If this is the stance the Tribunal is taking in relation to senior employees' performance, one can expect an even less "open" stance in relation to more junior/front line staff. I think we are a long way off the New York model.

I echo comments #3 and #4 above. This data is not only misleading for the reasons stated, but also apparently dangerous.

The Huffington Post covered an extreme response to the LA Times coverage (, where a teacher reportedly took his own life on the back of the article (the LA Times disputes this, of course). Such a reaction will be the exception but it underscores the burden that misleading the public can place on this particular front-line community profession.

I don't advocate for no accountability. I believe the buck stops with management. It's management that should be publicly accountable for the year-on-year performance of their staff and in turn, teachers are accountable to their managers within a private space that effective organisations [should] afford.

Bringing this full circle to FOI, thankfully British jurisprudence recognises this relative notion of accountability, as comment #5 above sets out in detail.

When I worked in a public sector, my senior manager was totally ignorant in science. However, the sector was working on very dangerous materials.

She loved to make technical decisions, but all the decisions based on her own feelings. She had no Bachelor's degree, but had been working there for more than thirty-five years.

I was very disappointed. I thought that such working conditions in a science sector could have only happened in developing country.