Latest News and Comment from Education

Friday, September 9, 2016

The Devil is in the Details, Utah

The Devil is in the Details, Utah:

The Devil is in the Details, Utah

devil sign

Some Utah parents are worried about afterschool Satan Clubs. I don’t blame them. However, and I’m no religious expert by any means, if there is a devil, I think it is always sneaking into town when and where you least expect.
Utah, in my opinion, has some devil-like programs designed to eliminate public-schools.
First, there’s social impact bonds or “pay-for-success” programs. These sound nice and enticing at first. Here is a description from the Stanford Social Innovation Review:
The plan called for United Way of Salt Lake to work with area partners, including StriveTogether (a national network of cross-sector community partnerships focused on improving public education), to expand high quality preschool opportunities in high-need communities, and for Goldman Sachs and J.B. Pritzker to provide $7 million in up-front funding to pay for the program. If the children who had been identified as potentially eligible for government-funded special education (beginning in kindergarten and often lasting through high school) were able to avoid tapping those services, then, ultimately, the state of Utah would pay investors their principal plus a financial return. (Because state legislation had not been passed in 2013, for the first cohort of children the investors are paid by United Way of Salt Lake and Salt Lake County).
The problem is that some children have disabilities for life that teachers, no matter how great miracle workers they might be, cannot fix. They can help the child improve, of The Devil is in the Details, Utah: