A cracking report from the august brains of the Brookings Institute endorses SIB & PFS structures. Happy days!
How Performance-Based Funding Can Improve Education Funding
Doug Mesecar & Don Soifer – Brookings
An alternative funding model gaining traction in several states is worth including among other education reform topics. Performance-based funding (PBF) is a method of funding social programs—including education—in which public resources are directed to approaches that produce better outcomes.
Pay-for-success is included as an option to fund activities under Title I, Part D, which addresses the education of neglected and delinquent students, and also in a provision of Title IV. (See here; search for “pay for success.”) These provisions are closely modeled on a bipartisan proposal originally put forward by Senators Hatch (R-Utah) and Bennet (D-Colo.).
Collectively, the combined funding for these two authorities enables over $300 million to potentially be used for innovative PBF initiatives (subject to appropriations, of course). Though these provisions are tucked in relatively small programs of ESSA, they nonetheless represent a watershed by their inclusion in the most prominent piece of new federal education legislation passed in many years.