Anna Merod writes about this approach to outcome-based funding in Fresno, California:
One innovative approach to help districts evaluate the return on investment from their ed tech tool purchases is the use of outcomes-based contracting, in which district payments made to ed tech companies are in part contingent on meeting student achievement goals. How districts are experimenting with outcomes-based contracts in ed tech, Anna Merod, K-12 Dive, 16 March 2026
As far as I can tell, the contracts underlying this example of outcome-based funding are non-tradable, along the lines of Social Impact Bonds. They're probably an improvement on the more ordinary government-funded services, where service-suppliers are paid regardless of results, but their non-tradability means that their scope is limited because the identity of the service providers is pre-determined: their status as service supplier is guaranteed, at least until the end of the contract and, while they do gain by being efficient, the scope of such funding arrangements is limited to goals that are short term relative to society's needs. Another disadvantage is that the cost of monitoring and verification of results represents a greater proportion of total outlay, as Ms Merod quotes an interviewee: "Outcomes-based contracts often require regular check-ins and accurate data collection from the provider."
A more general example comes from a policy brief (pdf) from University of Eastern Finland, which defines the long term for outcome-based contracts as "five to ten years or more".
I'm in two minds about these and other similar examples of outcome-based policy. They might represent a stepping stone along the way to Social Policy Bonds, which are tradable and have other advantages over the SIB approach, about which I have written here and here. But, because of their disadvantages, they might also discredit the notion of paying for results, and so make the implementation of the tradable version even less likely. I believe our biggest problems are national and global, and that they will require years or decades to solve. A goal such as 'nuclear peace' should be sustained for at least three decades, and would require a range of diverse, adaptive approaches, that cannot and should not be followed by a set range of service providers. Social Policy Bonds could target such a hugely important goal; conventional outcome-based policy, as implemented today, can't.
