Teachers OK negotiations with LAUSD

Los Angeles Unified officials have laid out a plan that would use student test scores to help measure teacher effectiveness and determine compensation, according to a memo from Deputy Superintendent John Deasy. The plan could be enacted as early as next fall.

In the past, leaders of United Teachers Los Angeles have fiercely opposed the inclusion of test data in gauging the effectiveness of educators. However, union President A.J. Duffy said Monday he is open to reforming the evaluation process and that "everything is on the table."

"I cannot negotiate in public," he said. "And I don't want my teachers to be bludgeoned into accepting, as part of an evaluation, a system that many experts say is flawed ... But we want to talk about everything."

The move comes in the wake of stories published by the Los Angeles Times, which is using a controversial "value-added" method of analyzing test scores to rate the effectiveness of some 6,000 elementary teachers. The value-added process compares a student's test score with his or her performance on previous tests. A database of the teachers and a ranking of their effectiveness using the value-added method is expected to be released later this month.