| In 1993, Congress passed the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA). This requires all Federal agencies to: produce strategic plans with long-term goals and performance goals; and to identify results and outcome measures for their strategies; and ultimately to submit their budget requests to Congress based on the results they will produce. This has proved to be a major challenge for programs in all Federal agencies, including HUD, DOL, DOE, and HHS. As has been the case since the 1930’s, any requirements a Federal agency itself must meet eventually are imposed on the entities that receive Federal money from it, including state and local governments and nonprofit agencies.
To implement the intent of GPRA among states and CAAs, the Office of Community Services and the national associations representing states and CAAs created a process to develop goals and outcome measures. That system is called the Results Oriented Management and Accountability system, or ROMA.
It created six national goals with about 75 suggested outcome measures (10 or 12 for each goal) for states and CAAs to use. The design standard used to create the 6 goals was that the goal framework should (a) cover the very broad range of strategies contemplated by the CSBG statute and used by CAAs nationwide, and (b) be able to describe at least 90% of what CAAs are doing. Recognizing that the processes of invention and innovation at the local level will always be creating strategies and results that are not-yet-incorporated into the formal reporting system, ROMA allows States and CAAs to add “local measures” to describe other new results that they are achieving.
ROMA’s Six National Goals are given here:
- Low-Income People Become More Self-Sufficient
- The Conditions in which Low- Income People Live Are Improved
- Low-Income People Own a Stake in Their Community
- Partnerships Among Supporters and Providers of Services to Low-Income People Are Achieved
- Agencies Increase Their Capacity to Achieve Results
- Low-Income People, Especially Vulnerable Populations, Achieve Their Potential by Strengthening Family and Other Supportive Systems
Created as a voluntary system, ROMA has followed the typical pathway of management systems created by a funding agency. It is now required of all states and CAAs. In the early 2000’s, the Office of Management and Budget began advocating that all Federal programs should have only a few (3-6) outcome measures, and that states and local entities should be held responsible for producing their negotiated amount of that national performance goal. This “WIA-as-the-ideal- template” approach is a challenge to implement in any human development program, and especially difficult in a block grant. This dialogue between OCS, the CAA network and OMB is now underway. You can follow this and other ROMA issues on the national ROMA clearinghouse web site at www.roma1.org At the local level, virtually all CAAs now use the six ROMA goals in some aspect of their planning, and are reporting on results – and on the ongoing challenges of developing effective results measures for human development and community development programs.
A related thread of the Congressional concern about outcomes affects Head Start. Beginning in the 1990’s, Congress heard disturbing testimony in the hearings on the Elementary and Secondary Act about the low-impact of the program and the inability to prove results. Measures of educational attainment from other programs were also reviewed. Many members of Congress perceived an overall decline in school performance. |
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These Congressional worries were first manifested in the Head Start program in the narrow focus on child outcome indicators (adopted in 1996) that seek to measure what each child has learned and to link this to school readiness.
The Bush Administration created a National Reporting System to produce the measurements sought by Congress. Although there are some specific problems with the NRS concept, the underlying concern about school readiness and school performance started in the early 1990’s and comes from a large majority of the members of Congress including both political parties.
All Federally funded programs must find ways to convince Congress they are producing the results that Congress wants. This Congressional concern also manifested itself in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (amendments to the ESEA Act) in which Congress seeks to compel increases in school performance and child progress. The NCLBA is now the bell-weather for all outcome measurement systems for education-related programs. This author is convinced that -- as goes the NCLBA, so will go ALL other education related programs, including Head Start.
Even with reduced core funding that came with the block grant in 1981, CAAs were able to increase their leveraging of additional funds. One survey in 1986 showed that with a CSBG budget of slightly more than $300,000 the average CAA was able to leverage more than $2.9 million, a ratio of $9.50 of other funds for every dollar of CSBG funding. Agencies also recruited an average of eight (part time) volunteers for every paid staff person.
By 2002, the CSBG IS Report which is prepared by the National Association of State
Community Services Programs (NASCSP) showed the ratio of dollars leveraged for each CSBG dollar was now $15.52 from all other sources, including Federal money and the value of volunteer hours. About $5 of that $15.52 is from state, local and private money. The number of non-CSBG dollars from all sources administered by CAAs has increased from about $1.9 billion in 1981 to about $9.8 billion in 2002.
In 2002, CAAs also received 40 million hours of volunteer services which is the equivalent of about 18,750 full time employees.
Whatever the specific approach taken by individual states and the block grant, the number of CAAs has increased since 1981 from about 932 to about 950. The number of counties covered by a CAA has increased from 2,300 in 1981 to about 3,100 of the nations 3,300 counties. Since 1981, more than 500 CAAs have approved the request from one or more neighboring counties to join the CAA.
CAAs have helped to significantly expand the local, state and federal resources to benefit low-income people. The philosophy of eliminating “the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty” remains the key concept that motivates CAAs today.
This paper was originally written by Jim Masters of the Center for Community Futures and published by NACAA for the
25th Anniversary of Community Action in 1989. He updates it here for the 40th Anniversary
Questions or comments? Contact him at jmasters@cencomfut.com
• Background
• LBJ State of the Union
• Creation:1964
• Formative Years: 1964 - 1967
• Restructuring Phase: 1967 - 1968
• Transition Years: 1969 - 1974
• Program Management Years 1974 - 1981
• Block Grant years: 1981 - Present
• The Results and Outcomes Years: 1993 - and into the future
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