Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) announced 2,620 Chicago public school children will soon have access to high-quality early childhood education as a result of a Social Impact Bond Program, an innovative financing format that will fund pre-K education over the next four years. The program will provide early childhood education to 2,620 students over the life of the project through a half-day Child-Parent Center (CPC) model, a program that works with both students and their parents to improve educational outcomes. Access to quality early educational programs directly impacts the success of students in elementary school and beyond.

Chicago’s nearly $17 million Social Impact Bond Program is structured to ensure that its lenders, the Goldman Sachs Social Impact Fund and Northern Trust as senior lenders, and the J.B. and M.K. Pritzker Family Foundation as a subordinate lender, are only repaid if students realize positive academic results. The Program’s goals include: increasing Kindergarten readiness, improving third-grade literacy, and reducing the need for special education services.

For the launch of the program, CPS identified six schools serving low-income families in communities that had a shortage of publicly funded, high quality pre-K seats available. These include DeDiego in West Town, Melody Elementary in Garfield-Humboldt; Thomas in McKinley Park, Wadsworth in Woodlawn, Peck in West Elsdon and Hanson Park in Belmont Cragin. CPS and its teachers will manage the expanded program in these schools for the current academic year and expand to additional schools in future years. Goldman Sachs and Pritzker pioneered this type of pay for success early childhood education financing with a similar effort last year for disadvantaged children in Utah.