ABSTRACT
The inability of police departments to curb the officer shootings of black youth underscore the difficulty that city leaders face in attempting to monitor, control, and change the behavior of its line personnel and street-level bureaucrats. The model of “professionalism” offers only an imperfect cure to the bureaucracy problem. Cities and suburbs have also turned to quantitative indicators of service delivery (“performance measurement” or “metrics”) in order to get a better understanding as to the steps that managers can take to improve the effectiveness and cost-efficiency municipal service provision. Service contracting and other forms of privatization seek to add a dose of competition that will energize municipal service delivery and save money. Privatization, though, faces numerous criticisms. Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) allow commercial property owners to act as partners in the production of local services. BIDs, however, raise important questions of democracy: Just who is empowered—and who is denied power—in the making of municipal service decisions? The chapter examines various forms of school privatization—the use of private contractors to manage public schools; the offering of school vouchers, scholarships, and tax credits; and the creation of charter schools—in order to assess just where privatization does—and does not—deliver on its promises. Vouchers have also become the backbone of the nation’s approach to provide housing for families in need.
