Federal Accountability

• Annual Report to Congress
• Government Performance Results Act of 1993 (GPRA)
• Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART)

Annual Report to Congress

OSEP is required to prepare and submit an Annual Report to the U.S. Congress on its progress in implementing IDEA and achieving results for children with disabilities and their families. This report contains the aggregation of state-level performance data, including tables of states rank-ordered by data they are required to report to OSEP (618 data).

Government Performance Results Act of 1993 (GPRA)

According to the Senate Committee on Government Affairs GPRA Report, the purpose of GPRA is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Federal programs by establishing a system to set goals for program performance and to measure results. Overall, GPRA is intended to ensure that federal dollars produce the greatest results.

Each federal agency is required to establish performance goals for its programs and initiatives through an annual performance plan. Along with the goals, a summary of the necessary resources, the performance indicators that will be used to measure performance, and a description of how the measured values will be verified must be included. Each plan is required to be consistent with the agency's budget for its programs.

The U.S. Department of Education's most current Program Performance Plan includes program goals and indicators, including annual strategies and targets, for IDEA Special Education Grants for Infants and Families and Preschool Grants.

The U.S. Department of Education publishes its performance on agency-wide goals in an Annual Performance and Accountability Report and provides performance information for individual IDEA programs, including Part C (pages 107 to 109) and Section 619 (pages 121 to 123).

Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART)

In order to know if Federal programs work as intended and provide results, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has begun assessing the performance of federal programs across all federal departments using its Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). PART includes a common set of standards to ascertain whether federal programs are actually fulfilling the missions under which they were created. This includes IDEA.

The PART, a tool that places the government's focus squarely on results, is essentially a questionnaire consisting of four sections that measure a specific management aspect of each federal program:

• Program Purpose and Design
• Strategic Planning
• Program Management
• Program Results and Accountability

Together these four sections reflect a program's strengths and weaknesses and result in rating its performance. A program's performance rating is used for funding and management decision-making aimed at improving program effectiveness.

ExpectMore.gov provides information on each federal program's performance and what is being done to improve results. Programs that are PERFORMING have ratings of Effective, Moderately Effective, or Adequate. Programs categorized as NOT PERFORMING have ratings of Ineffective or Results Not Demonstrated. OMB provides definitions of each of these ratings. Each assessed program has a plan to improve its performance and management over time and is accountable for these improvements.

Findings from the most recent PART evaluation can be accessed as follows:

• IDEA Grants for Infants and Families - A summary rating is provided as well as detailed information on the PART assessment for Part C of IDEA.

• IDEA Preschool Grants - A summary rating is provided as well as detailed information on the PART assessment for Section 619 of IDEA.

In creating fiscal year budgets, the PART is used by the Administration to justify budget allocations. The PART Ratings and Funding Levels Table (PDF: 1,151kb) (see page 5) provides information on recent funding appropriations for IDEA programs.