Commentary: “Public Value” and the Measurement of Government Performance: The Shift to Subjective Metrics

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12234
• Published date: 01 July 2014
• Date: 01 July 2014

Commentary

Richard L. Brodsky served as a

member of the New York State Assembly

for 28 years. He is currently in the private

practice of law, serves as senior fellow in

New York University’s Wagner Graduate

School of Public Service, and is senior fellow

at Demos, a public policy organization com-

mitted to a more inclusive democracy.

E-mail: richardbrodsky@gmail.com

478 Public Administration Review • July | August 2014

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 4, pp. 478–479. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12234.

Richard L. Brodsky

National Arbitration and Mediation Inc.

Mark H. Moore certainly of‌f ers insights of

intrinsic worth into the elements of demo-

cratic theory that modulate the relationship

between the public and government institutions in

his article “Public Value Accounting: Establishing the

Philosophical Basis.” At the heart of the search for

public value as a measure of the success or failure of

government is a conscious, if unspoken, ef‌f ort to shift

from objective to subjective metrics. Ef‌f orts to elevate

value-based, democratic expressions and evaluations

seem self-evidently good.  ey are not hard to visual-

ize in an academic setting. But American political

institutions have an embedded preference for objective

standards that will not easily be replaced.

 is entrenched preference is most visible in two

areas: the long-standing use of gross domestic product

(GDP) as the default measurement of performance

and the relatively newer insistence on standardized

testing for the evaluation of educational performance

by teachers.

With respect to GDP, it has been and remains the

preeminent metric, with direct consequences for

programmatic decisions and enormous political

consequences in elections. Its limitations are obvious

and were even acknowledged by its intellectual parent,

Simon Kuznets, who said in 1934, “ e welfare of a

nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement

of national income as def‌i ned by the GDP” (Kuznets

1934, 7).

 ere has been broad dissatisfaction with GDP as a

measure of government success. It ignores distribu-

tional consequences and leaves value-based policies

with no competing argument. How should we assess

the success of the food stamp program, for example?

In the face of such concerns, a number of academic

and state-based ef‌f orts are being made to substitute a

Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), which assesses “26

variables related to economic, social, and environmen-

tal progress. Economic indicators include inequality

and the cost of unemployment. Environmental

indicators include the cost of water pollution, air

pollution, climate change, wetlands depletion, forest

cover change, and non-renewable energy resources.

Social indicators include the value of housework,

higher education and volunteer work as well as the

cost of commuting and crime” (Daly and McElwee

2014).

To an extent, GPI does objectify what we would

otherwise think of as value-based metrics by costing

out things such as pollution and climate change. But

it indicates that issues as f‌l uid as inequality, home-

making, volunteer work, and use of renewable energy

sources also have a place in the ef‌f ort to judge the

success of government programs.  e movement is

small but building, and it will likely be the practi-

cal expression of the concern for value-based metrics

asserted by Moore.

 e bitter divisions about standardized testing in

education have pitted policy makers, elected of‌f‌i cials,

teachers, parents, and schools against each other in

many states. Enshrined in law in the Race to the Top

program and the No Child Left Behind Act, standard-

ized testing has been subject to scathing criticism, led

by noted educator Diane Ravitch. “Evaluating teach-

ers in relation to student test scores will have many

adverse consequences. . . more time and resources

will be devoted to raising scores on these tests.  e

curriculum will be narrowed even more. . . because of

the link between wages and scores.  ere will be even

less time available for the arts, science, history, civics,

foreign language, even physical education. Teachers

will teach to the test.  ere will be more cheating,

more gaming the system” (Ravitch 2010).

Even as parents withdraw their children from the

testing regimen, no value-based countermetric has

emerged as an alternative. Use of portfolios, grades,

and other evaluation techniques for students and

teachers does not have the simplicity and clarity of test

scores.

“Public Value” and the Measurement of Government

Performance:  e Shift to Subjective Metrics