This is truly one of those moments when I wish I hadn't called it, but here comes Pay for Success. John Mooney at NJSpotlight posted this story this morning. State Senator Ruiz has introduced two bills to pay for a new pre-school initiative.
One involves the dedication of $103 million of state money. Read the full text of the bill here. The other bill is called “Early Childhood Innovation Act”. I love the names given to these things. Anyway, it's a "loan pilot" program. Let's call it what it is: Social Impact Bonds aka Pay for Success. You can read the full text of the bill here.
I'm not going to go into all the reasons of why Social Impact Bonds are a terrible "solution" for New Jersey. I've already written about and testified against it. You can read all of it here, here, and here.
Keep private money out of public education. Do we need high quality preschool in New Jersey? Yes. Absolutely. What we don't need is Wall St. paying for it with the promise to earn that money back on the backs of our youngest and most vulnerable citizens.
We ALL deserve better than that.
Edited to add: Revised bill S973.