Question

REV VS ADOPTED FY 2012 ACTUAL FY 2014 ADOPTED Measure Measure Type Result FY 2013 REVISED FY 2013 FORECAST Description VAR 8.0% Percent of Parent Child/Case Dependency Petitions not Granted Number of Dependency Parent/Child Cases Resolved Net Parent/Child/ Case Dependency Assignments 43.2% 41.1 % 43.896 44.4% 3396 Output 7,464 7,322 6,434 7,782 6.3% Demand 11,422 9,488 12,480 14,352 4,864 51.3% Efficiency Cost per $951.78 $967.88$1,368.21 $1,471.60 $(503.72) -52.0% Dependency Parent/Child/Case Resolved 100-GENERAL TOTAL USES $7,104,065 $7,104,065 $7,086,827 $7,086,827 $8,803,090 $8,803,090 $11,451,996 $11,451,996 $(4365169) $(4365169) -61.6% -61.6%

1. Maricopa County’s Public Defense Services Agency (the public defender’s office) tracks performance metrics very closely. Table 9.2 is from the FY [Fiscal Year] 2014 Annual Business Strategies: Adopted Budget document. Examine the trends and the connections between the measures and the expenditure dollars. Does the FY 2014 adopted budget seem reasonable? TABLE 9.2 Maricopa County Public Defense Services Agency Performance Measures Note: “FY 2013 Revised” refers to the active official budget. “FY 2014 Adopted” refers to the original budget approved by the Board of Supervisors. Source: http://www.maricopa.gov/Budget/pdf/MCABS2014.pdf (p. 762).

2. Sky High School has significant student dropout and failure rates among its senior-year classes. To address this issue, it has obtained grant funding for the senior class. Because this problem appears to be dispersed across the entire senior class, some elements of the program serve all the seniors, even those who appear successful and on track toward graduation throughout the year. The objective of the program is for the students to complete the senior year and graduate. Success of this retention program is determined to be graduation. The data in Table 9.3 are available. TABLE 9.3 Sky High School Senior Class Retention Program Performance Measures Please provide measures of process and financial measures of efficiency and effectiveness. Is the Sky High School guidance office making progress towards its mission? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Ans 1: FY 2014 Budget adopted by Maricopa County’s Public Defense Services Agency is not reasonable based on the following three counts: a) Dependency Cases Resolved (Output) percentage to Net Dependency Assignments (Demand) in Revised FY 2013 Budget it was 77.17% whereas in FY 2014 adopted budget it is only 54.22% which is a significant drop without any reasonable justifications or cusion coming from (b) Efficiency measure witnessing a drop of 52% and (c) Increase in Expenditure due to these factors by 61.6%. Hence we reiterate that the adopted budget is not reasonable.

Ans 2: Sky High School data provided in the table when analysed through the two main objectives of funding program i.e. to decrease the drop out rate among seniors and improve the failure rate. The following table throws two conflicting data:-

School Year	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Number of seniors who complete their senior year	1250	1225	1267	1223	1260
Number of high school students graduating	1200	1159	1240	1125	1206
Number of seniors enrolled first day of school	1377	1294	1322	1258	1294
Expenditures for retention program	$35,65,053.00	$33,50,166.00	$34,22,658.00	$42,57,852.00	$42,57,852.00
Drop Out Rate	9.22%	5.33%	4.16%	2.78%	2.63%	4.83%
Failure Rate	4.00%	5.39%	2.13%	8.01%	4.29%	4.76%

Drop out rate is calculated by dividing the Number of Seniors who could not complete their senior years (i.e. Number of Seniors enrolled first day of school minus Number of Seniors who complete their senior year) to number of seniors enrolled first day of school. We can witness that the drop out rate has come down significantly from 9.22% in year 2010 to 2.63% in the year 2014. Average drop out rate only 4.83% now in year 2014.

Failure rate on the contrary is not forming any trend increasing in one year largerly then increasing manifold in other year. The failure rate is calculated by number of senior who completed their senior year minus number of high school student graduating dividing this number by number of senior who completed their senior year. Average failure rate too is 4.76% which is higher than 4.00% recorded in 2010.

The summary can be derived by understanding that only drop out objective has been looked into by the school from this program and failure rate has not been brought to the focus with the same intention as drop out rate. The school should be questioned about their efforts in the direction to reduce failure rate too.