This brief presents emerging findings from the first year of a pilot cohort of school districts and PL provider pairs implementing outcomes based contracting (OBC) for curriculum-based professional learning (CBPL), surfacing opportunities and open questions for the field.
Driven by tightening budgets and demands for greater return on education spending, school districts are rethinking how they procure CPBL services. In partnership with the Center for Outcomes-Based Contracting, a cohort of districts and PL providers is piloting OBC. Under this model, a substantial portion of provider compensation is directly contingent upon achieving agreed-upon performance outcomes for CBPL implementation.
This brief takes on the question of how the OBC model shapes contracting and implementation of CBPL. We draw on Year 1 findings from interviews with 13 stakeholders across three district-provider pairs and document analysis of OBC contracts and their previous, traditional (non-OBC) contracts. In Year 2, we will continue to examine how the emerging strengths of OBC and tensions shift or persist, while also examining the more widespread inclusion of student performance in contingent payment outcomes.
KEY FINDINGS
- The OBC process resulted in contracts that were more detailed and that district interviewees felt were more aligned with their districts’ needs.
- Continuous improvement check-ins that were built directly into the scope of work helped the district and PL provider staff strengthen the implementation of CBPL services.
- District staff valued how mutual accountability helped tie their investment directly to specific outcomes.
- Across all partnerships, interviewees agreed that the OBC process requires more investment of staff time and operational infrastructure compared to non-OBC contracting.
- PL provider staff raised tensions in navigating the perceived lack of flexibility in the OBC contracts and concerns about financial risk.
- Districts and PL providers noted an absence of standardized ways to measure the timely impacts of PL on teachers, which created challenges in identifying appropriate contingent payment outcomes.
How to apply these findings to your work
- PL practitioners and district leaders: See how the supportive elements of the OBC process (e.g., mutual accountability and continuous improvement structures) could inform your CBPL procurement and implementation practices.
- PL practitioners: Assess whether OBC is a fit for how you provide CBPL services.
- District leaders: Assess whether OBC is a fit for how your district contracts for CBPL.
- The PL field broadly: Inform efforts to develop and adopt shared infrastructure for measuring CBPL impacts.
