RBA: A blueprint for measuring community outcomes

    Over the last four years, Durham County has developed a model plan to have a unified commitment to improving outcomes for our children, families, neighborhoods and broader community which is now a wide-spread community effort. 
   
   Only a few counties in the United States are doing this kind of work. In Durham, the initiative is called Results Based Accountability. It means that community agencies, neighborhood groups, city and county government and citizens across Durham will have accountability on shared priority outcomes that they collectively track and measure.   

   These 9 outcomes are:

1. 1.Durham citizens are safe.
2. 2.Durham enjoys a prosperous economy.
3. 3.Durham citizens enjoy a healthy environment.
4.  Durham citizens enjoy a community that is vibrant, rich in aesthetic beauty and embraces and promotes cultural heritage.
5. Children are ready for and succeeding in school.
6. Every citizen is Durham has access to adequate, safe affordable housing.
7. Durham citizens are healthy.
8. Durham citizens enjoy sustainable, thriving neighborhoods with efficient and well-maintained infrastructure.
9. Senior adults in Durham will have optimum choices for the highest quality of life.

    The nine outcomes are the structure of RBA and the work of the nine work groups feed into an annual Community Report Card which looks at how each group is measuring its progress.

   Durham’s Partnership for Children and Durham Public Schools have led the “Children are Ready for and Succeeding in School” workgroup to make sure efforts are aligned across a continuum of education that begins at birth.

   This group has been active working to break down traditional silos typical of large administrations to compile baseline data so we can see how prepared children are upon entering kindergarten. This initiative has brought more than 30 organizations together—some of them for the first time—such as Durham Parks and Recreation, Community in Schools, the Durham Library and Durham CAN. These agencies are working with Durham’s Partnership for Children and Durham Public Schools to strengthen our education system and its internal and external supports to ensure more children are prepared for school and more youth successfully graduate.   

“Children Ready for and Succeeding in School” means that Durham has identified five broad county indicators to measure this effort; workgroups will work on strategies for successful progress on these indicators. Ideally, every child will have everything he/she needs to be ready for and successful in school.  The five indicators being tracked are: (1) quality child care, (2) school readiness (baseline yet to be defined), (3) 3rd grade reading scores, (4) 8th grade EOG scores, and (5) the dropout rate. Multiple strategies have been developed by each workgroup in an effort to improve these areas.

   Developing the five indicators took more than a year of work. Although the work can be complicated, the Children Ready and Succeeding in School workgroup now has aligned measures for our children that are being tackled across multiple organizations! That alone makes the future of this initiative truly exciting.

    This is a long-term process. However, still in its infancy, the RBA process is changing the way many organizations work. RBA is breaking down barriers and creating more community stakeholders. No one organization can meet these outcomes alone. By sharing the responsibility of meeting, measuring, and tracking community outcomes and remaining focused, these workgroups (made up of hundreds of organizations and concerned residents) have the potential to create sustained change in Durham County.

As senior policy analyst with Durham County, Bill Stout manages the nine workgroups of Durham’s RBA.