Accountability Systems and Coping in the Bureaucratic Environment

• In Event: Accountability and Responsiveness in Public Policy

Abstract

To cope with their high workloads and lack of adequate resources, street level bureaucrats prioritize some clients over others. This prioritization is tied to judgments about deservingness based on client effort and performance. This paper aims to revisit work by Jilke and Tummers (2018) and Guul, Pederson, and Peterson (2021) that examined how teachers and case workers prioritize different types of clients to receive extra assistance according to variations in effort and performance. Interesting, Guul and colleagues found high performing clients were prioritized, whereas Jilke and Tummers found that average and low performing students were prioritized. We seek to explore this further and add to their approaches by examining the differential effects of high accountability performance management systems as potentially mediating the way street level bureaucrats allocate their discretionary effort. Previous research has shown that bureaucrats sometimes engage in “delegitmization”, changing which clients they label as deserving or deviant based on performance management targets (Brodkin, 2011). Thus, this research asks the question: how do high accountability performance management systems change the way teachers provide assistance to different types of students, if at all? In particular, do teachers change the types of students they are willing to assist if they are working under a more strict accountability regime, compared to a less strict accountability regime?

We test these relationships using experimental data collected from New York State public school teachers. Teachers were randomly assigned to either a condition where one-third of their annual performance rating was tied to student performance on standardized tests, or two-thirds of their rating depended on student test performance. Then teachers were asked to prioritize which types of students they would help outside of normal class time, choosing between pairs of students, where student performance and level of effort were varied.

Studying whether teachers prioritize different students under different accountability regimes is important because this allocation of discretionary effort is likely to impact student learning outcomes. It further allows researchers to understand whether and how organizational constraints, including accountability regimes, impact the way street level bureaucrats assess the deservingness of their clients.

Citations

Brodkin, E. Z. (2011). “Policy Work: Street-Level Organizations under New Managerialism.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 21 (suppl 2): i253–i277.
Jilke, S., & Tummers, L. (2018). Which clients are deserving of help? A theoretical model and experimental test. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 28(2), 226-238.
Guul, T. S., Pedersen, M. J., & Petersen, N. B. G. (2021). Creaming among caseworkers: effects of client competence and client motivation on caseworkers’ willingness to help. Public Administration Review, 81(1), 12-22.

Authors

• Christine H. Roch, Georgia State University

• Ellen V. Rubin, SUNY, University at Albany