Utah preschools give investors a healthy return — but do kids lose out?

Utah has used a social impact bond (SIB) to provide high-quality preschool education for low-income children, leading to the first-ever “pay for success” payout in the United States. Targeted to prevent at-risk kids from entering expensive special education, the project has exceeded targets every year, saving the state money and providing healthy returns to private investors. Though it has triggered greater state involvement in preschool education, critics have argued the results were tilted in favour of investors, and the long-term impact on children may have been overestimated.