the advocacy monitor

Independent Living News & Policy from the National Council on Independent Living

Focusing on Outcomes in the CIL Program: Report from the NCIL Outcome Measures Task Force

ILA protest sign 2011Since 2006, the National Council on Independent Living (NCIL) has sponsored a concerted effort to measure and improve program outcomes in the approximately 400 Centers for Independent Living throughout the United States.  Four factors have motivated this emphasis on outcomes:

  • Centers themselves were calling for a better way to capture their accomplishments, not only to share their successes with various audiences, but also to improve their own effectiveness.
  • The Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) of the U.S. Department of Education (ED) had begun an increased focus on outcomes, but not all Centers agreed with the desired outcomes and the measurement methods RSA was suggesting.
  • In 2003, the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had applied its Program Assessment Review Tool (PART) to the Center program within RSA, and OMB concluded that the program suffered from “Results not demonstrated”.  This OMB finding was explicitly not a statement that the Center program was being ineffective, but simply that the program was not yet identifying its desired outcomes, measuring them, and using that information to continually improve effectiveness.
  • Some states and Centers had begun their own, early efforts to focus more on outcomes, and those results were promising enough to encourage a more standardized, national effort.

Read the Outcome Measures Task Force Report in PDF or Word.

Comments

  1. Is there a place we can get this manual.

    • theadvocacymonitor says

      Hi Larry,

      Yes, just click one of the two links above, where it says “Read the Outcome Measures Task Force Report in PDF or Word.”