Salt Lake City looking for partners for next PFS project as Kate Schimel examines the PFS/SIB movement relating to education and prison. Interesting reading:
Salt Lake County Looking For Lead Agency For Next Pay For Success Project
Utah Policy
Mayor Ben McAdams says the county is again looking to the nonprofit community for program ideas that help address homelessness in the community. A third Pay for Success contract request has now been issued and interested groups have until Sept. 8th to apply.
McAdams said the latest Request for Proposals extends the county’s pioneering effort in following data and evidence to arrive at what works, and to only pay for specific outcomes that the county has identified that meet a social service need.
“We are committed to program service delivery that achieves a measurable improvement for the people we’re concerned about, while at the same time being respectful of the public’s tax dollars,” said McAdams. “The Pay for Success contract method is both innovative and practical, in that regard.”
Tracing The School-To-Prison Pipeline
Kate Schimel – Education Dive
Earlier this year, in an essay for the Arkansas Law Review, Western State University law professor Tracie R. Porter took the education system to task.
“The school environment should be conducive to learning, which cannot occur when the facility looks more like a prison than a classroom,” Porter wrote. She wasn’t speaking metaphorically. The essay, titled “The School-to-Prison Pipeline: The Business Side of Incarcerating, Not Educating, Students in Public Schools,” was an examination of the money supporting harsh school disciplinary practices that drive students out of the classroom and into jail cells.
Can money be a fix, rather than an impediment?
But in some places, the tide has started to turn as increasing attention focuses on the ways the pipeline affects students. As a result, districts are reconsidering their school disciplinary and policing policies. Denver, for example, worked with community groups and local law enforcement to restructure student discipline and who should respond when they act out.
Some states have also begun to consider grants that would turn the private funding model on its head. Instead of leveraging funds from private prison operators, some states and districts are considering leveraging private investors’ money. The model, called Pay for Success, is essentially a long-term investment in achieving better student outcomes. Private investors, along with districts and schools, put money toward programs like preschool and summer school that help prevent behavioral and academic struggles down the line. The government pays back the funds if the program succeeds at preventing negative outcomes down the line.
The Pay for Success system has also been applied to youth recidivism at New York’s Rikers Island in an effort to prevent students who have already spent time in a juvenile detention center from returning. States like Utah and Colorado are testing the waters, implementing small Pay for Success programs to see if they work or contemplating larger legislation.