Performance measures redirect frontline discretion toward easier cases and away from hard ones

Evidence

Relatedly, street-level bureaucrats will make choices and exercise discretion by directing their activities in ways that will improve their performance scores. This phenomenon did not begin and end with Peter Blau’s classic report of the employment counselors who, when assessed in terms of successful placement ratios rather than the case load they carried, made greater efforts for easy-to-place clients at the expense of more difficult cases. 8 The phenomenon of” creaming” in recruiting for social programs has similar dynamics. Workers select for their programs clients likely to do well in them, in order to improve the appearance of success. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1205

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the social-capital literature on how assessment metrics reshape the behavior they measure (Campbell’s law / construct validity in performance measurement).
• SEED: Angle: how ‘creaming’ shows that the metric, not the mission, becomes the client-selection algorithm in welfare, schools, and medicine alike.