Street-level work is structurally shielded from supervisory observation, making direct performance measurement infeasible.

Evidence

Street-level bureaucrats’ interactions with clients tend to take place in private or beyond the scrutiny of supervisors. Interviews are held in private offices and under norms of confidentiality. Teaching is done in classrooms that principals and supervisors do not normally enter; if they do, they provide notice so that the teaching, like a performance, may be changed by the presence of an audience. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1225

Categorization

• XREF: Grounds the reader’s argument that discretion operates out of sight — the structural precondition for stereotype routinization at the front line.