Why is the U.S. Department of Education calculating efficiency measures?
The performance of every federal program is assessed to make sure it is working well for the American people. The assessment uses a standard questionnaire called the Program Assessment Rating Tool, or PART, for short. The PART asks approximately 25 important, yet common sense, questions about a program’s performance and management. One of these questions asks whether the program demonstrates improved efficiencies or cost effectiveness in achieving program goals each year. To be able to respond to this question, the Department has begun computing program and project-level measures of cost per successful outcome as one way of measuring improvements in program efficiency over time.
