Patrick Lester

This report discusses governments addressing this challenge in three different program areas—those highlighted in the 2018 Family First Prevention Services Act as important to reducing child maltreatment by increasing investments in three kinds of prevention services—home visiting, mental health services, and substance abuse services.

Lester points to two key factors that influence success or failure in scaling evidence- based programs:

As originally envisioned, charter schools were intended to be laboratories of innovation. Offering broad flexibility in exchange for performance-based accountability, charter schools are well-positioned to test, validate, and adopt new practices in a public school environment.

Early-stage innovations receive smaller grants; mid-level programs with promising evidence receive larger grants; and initiatives with substantial evidence of success in multiple settings are expanded nationally and receive the largest grants.

As part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2014, Congress authorized a limited number of local projects targeted to assisting disconnected youth. The Performance Partnership Pilots program currently involves participation from seven different federal departments or agencies and is administered by the Department of Education.

Prodded by past scandals and court orders, the State of Tennessee today has one of the nation’s best performance-contracting systems for its child welfare program. In this report, Patrick Lester documents its evolution and use, and how Tennessee has avoided some of the common design flaws endemic in other social service programs using the performance-based contract model.