Committee hears plan to measure effects of Act 1240 waivers on school performance and spending

Amanda Brown, presenting the study team’s next analytic step, told the Senate Education Committee the waiver impact analysis will concentrate on Act 1240 waivers granted since 2015 and will exclude long‑standing charter waivers and near‑universal flexible‑schedule waivers.

Brown said the team has built a panel dataset with waiver topic codes, demographic controls and expenditure/performance records for 2015–2019. The planned empirical approach includes descriptive comparisons, regression models that control for pre‑waiver differences, and aggregations by waiver topic to test instructional versus resource‑use impacts.

She explained that many schools seeking a programmatic change must request multiple individual waivers (for example, teacher licensure exceptions require up to 17 different individual waivers), so the team will model impacts both by individual waiver and by grouped waiver topics (instructional waivers such as teacher licensure, attendance and class size; resource waivers such as personnel and compensation).

Brown told the committee she will provide the results in a future meeting and asked members whether the proposed focus (Act 1240 schools, excluding schedule waivers) matched committee priorities; members confirmed the approach and asked for additional context on waiver topic definitions, timing and typical implementation periods.

The consultants emphasized they will compare schools before and after waivers were granted and will include a control group of schools that did not receive waivers, controlling for school characteristics such as size, grade span and pre‑waiver performance.