Training and experience surrogate measures correlate weakly with actual service quality

Evidence

Street-level bureaucracies also measure the training and experience of employees as a way of assessing quality. These surrogates represent qualities that are hypothetically associated with good performance. Thus a teaching faculty is assessed in terms of its educational background although the graduate training in question is only problematically related to effective teaching. Street-level bureaucracies often depend on the experience or training of their workers as signs of quality service, although it is not clear that more training or experience is associated with doing a better job. Low-income parents often express concern that experienced teachers exercise seniority rights and migrate to schools in-affiuent neighborhoods. But experience is problematically related to effective teaching. The less-experienced teacher may be more interested, energetic, ambitious, more recently educated and familiar with new techniques, and more sympathetic toward a low-income clientele. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 405

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces ‘surrogate measures’ as a concept: qualities hypothetically but not verifiably associated with good performance.
• XREF: connects to: Quantitative performance measures are surrogates that cannot capture the most important service dimensions — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1214; Quantitative throughput measures can be inversely related to actual service quality — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1210; Resource-deployment metrics measure inputs rather than the quality of service delivered — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1209 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Quantitative performance measures are surrogates that cannot capture the most important service dimensions #corroborates (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1214
• Resource-deployment metrics measure inputs rather than the quality of service delivered #corroborates (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1209
• Quantitative throughput measures can be inversely related to actual service quality #corroborates (0.80) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1210
• Managers knowingly use quantitative indicators as quality surrogates despite acknowledged inference problems #corroborates (0.75) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1213