Eight school districts in Arkansas have been awarded grants to help them implement outcomes-based contracts to improve student outcomes. School districts from Jonesboro to Harrison to West Fork received $10,000 grants to design and implement an OBC for the 2027-28 school year. Meghan Busbey is the senior director of programs at Forward Arkansas. She says one example of an outcomes-based contract is a tutoring provider for a school district.
Busbey: And so instead of just paying $1,000, let’s just throw a number out there, $1,000 per kid for that tutoring. You say, “OK, well, actually, we’ll pay a base payment amount for each student.” But then the other part of the contract is contingent upon the student outcomes that that district sets that are in alignment with their district plan.
And so a lot of the time in Arkansas, we do see this aligned with ATLAS, which is the summative assessment in the state for all students through 10th grade. And so in Arkansas, we’ve seen summative assessment. We’ve also seen, “Hey, we’re going to do a midpoint check-in in December or in January to see how students are doing.” And so with outcomes-based contracting, at least 40% of that total contract is going to be contingent upon whatever outcomes the district sets…