A brief missive to our dear cousins:
Dear America,
The United States represents the greatest economic achievements of mankind and the unsullied optimism and endeavour to help build a better community does your nation proud.
After a week peppered with rather chippy, very regressive, outcome oblivious remarks from other parts, today SIB News is graced with a lovely upbeat discussion on how to make a better world…
Vogel: Social Impact Bonds
John Vogel – VPR
According to the latest research, 47% of children entering kindergarten are not ready to learn to read. And there’s a 90% chance that a poor reader at the end of first grade will always be a poor reader. Fortunately, we now have the tools to break this pattern and can do it in a way that would not cost taxpayers in Vermont any money.
Research tells us that 80% of the brain develops in the first three years of life, so it is critical that preschool teachers get good literacy training. And it turns out that one of the leading organizations in the country that works with children around the neuroscience of learning is located in Vermont.
The Stern Center in Williston has developed a program called Building Blocks for Literacy designed specifically to enable preschool teachers to teach young children the pre-literacy skills they need based on the latest research.
Training preschool teachers, of course, costs money – but that’s where a new funding instrument comes in. It’s called Pay for Success Contracts or Social Impact Bonds, and the idea is that an entity, usually the government, pays for results rather than activities. New York, Utah and Massachusetts have already issued Social Impact Bonds for things like prisoner recidivism and early childhood education.