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NCLB Waivers, Part Three

Posted on February 10, 2012 in Education

In an announcement yesterday, President Barack Obama awarded 10 states—five from the South (Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Tennessee)—waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The states will receive relief from requirements in the law in exchange for implementing reforms around standards, teacher effectiveness and accountability.

Three state waivers—Florida, Georgia, and Oklahoma—are conditional upon the states adopting policies or legislation that completes the reforms outlined in their applications. For the most part, however, these conditions relate to parts of the plans that are not yet in place but are in process.

The other five states earning relief are Colorado, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New Jersey. The Department of Education is working with New Mexico (the only state applying for a waiver in the first round that was unsuccessful) on completing its application. Taken together, the 10 states represent nearly 24 percent of all American students.

In exchange for receiving a waiver, states must to agree to adopt specific changes to their educational programs. For the most part, these changes mirror the expectations of the Race to the Top Grants that were announced by the Administration last year. To earn a waiver, states must:

• Adopt college- or career-readiness standards for all students
• Establish evaluation systems for teachers and principals and implement programs to improve effectiveness
• Institute new performance targets for improving student achievement and closing achievement gaps
• Develop a new accountability system with particular focus on targeted interventions for the lowest performing schools and rewards for high-performing schools and those that are making significant gains

Among the flexibilities offered by the waivers, chief among them is relief from a requirement to have all students proficient in reading and math on state assessments by 2014, a target that is widely considered to be unrealistic. States also earn increased flexibility on how they spend Title I funds, removing the silo approach that limits their application at the school level. States also will be able to measure school and district effectiveness based on student improvement (rather than static performance, as under current law). States also were given the leeway on the measures they would take to improve performance at the lowest achieving schools, a departure from NCLB, which mandates states take specific, and in some places unrealistic, interventions when schools fall below targets. Moreover, the waivers step back from the highly proscriptive nature of NCLB on determining performance targets and sanctions for those schools failing to meet benchmarks, providing states the ability to tailor targets and interventions.

An interesting element of the waiver requirements is that states must expand actions beyond the current system of interventions for low achieving schools to a program of rewards for high and improved performance, coupled with strategies for improving the outcomes for schools and subgroups of students who continue to struggle. Such a differentiated accountability system has been implemented in several states, although reconciling such systems with mandates of NCLB can prove to be problematic

As has been outlined in previous issues of Ednotes on the Issues and in a recent SLC Issue Alert, the move to implement waivers comes, in part, because Congress is past due to reauthorize and update the No Child Left Behind Act, which became law in January 2002. In many ways, activities and reforms at the state and local level have raced ahead of the existing federal law, including state-driven efforts for new shared state standards and shared assessments; new teacher and principal evaluation systems that are tied to effectiveness and improved practice; and enhanced school and system-wide accountability systems that focus on improvements instead of sanctions.

The waivers reflect a response to the general frustration with the current state of affairs, as well as a need to move forward on education reform outside existing policy. Dissenting responses to the issuance of waivers has been fairly muted, although the California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson (who is responsible for the education of nearly 13 percent of all students in the United States) noted in a statement “[NCLB]’s failures should prompt a thorough reassessment of the federal role in education, not merely the substitution of one set of inflexible requirements for another.” Others, including Congressman John Kline, chair of the House Education Committee, echoed concern that education reform would require a legislative, and not executive, resolution.

These concerns notwithstanding, there is a recognition that while there is a consensus on the fact that NCLB is broken, there is no consensus on how to fix it, and very little likelihood that Congress will take action on it prior to the 2014 proficiency deadline. Without some relief, states and districts will find themselves in the position of undertaking costly interventions for students in the vast majority of schools.

While the relief provided by the administration from NCLB follows upon a narrow range of options, the approach to education reform it supports in many ways reflects the steps already being taken at the state level, reflecting an acknowledgement that states, and not the federal government, continue to drive forward education reform. In making the announcement of the waivers yesterday, President Obama noted as much, saying “if we’re serious about helping our children reach their potential, the best ideas aren’t going to come from Washington alone.”

The announcement of the 10 states to earn flexibility from NCLB is not the end of the process, however. When the proposal was presented in September 2011, the administration acknowledged that not all states were in the same position to meet the requirements for flexibility, and that there would be a second round of applications considered for relief. To date, 28 states have indicated their intentions to seek waivers. The deadline for submission for the second round of waivers is February 21.

State applications for waivers may be viewed below:

States indicating an intention to apply for waivers in the second round (as of February 6):

States Efforts to Promote the Motion Picture and Video Game Industries

Posted on October 31, 2011 in Economy

In June 2007, the SLC issued a report entitled Lights! Camera! Action! Southern State Efforts to Attract Filmmakers' Business. The major objective of the report was to hone in on a trend that was sweeping across the country: states, led by 2002 landmark legislation in Louisiana, working proactively to lure the motion picture and television industries to work within their borders. In addition, the report highlighted why the film industry landscape in the United States had become very competitive—vis-à-vis international locations in Canada and Eastern Europe—in the early to mid-years of the decade and provided details on some of the aggressive new and revised financial and other incentives offered by states to filmmakers.

Since the release of this SLC report, two important developments have surfaced that require attention:

Film Industry

A number of studies contend that state film incentives are not a sound investment of scarce state tax dollars and that states should strongly reevaluate continuing the practice. For instance, in a study released in March 2009, Professor Susan Christopherson, Cornell University, maintained that "most of the three dozen states chasing film production with tax breaks will not catch up with New York and California, where the movie and television industries have been dug in for decades. The subsidies they’re giving the productions don’t have a long-term economic impact for the state." Another study, prepared by Robert Tannenwald at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities also maintained "[I]n the harsh light of reality, film subsidies offer little bang for the buck."

Similarly, other state studies maintain that states did accrue financial gains from these incentives and that policymakers should continue to extend offering these incentives after careful and ongoing reviews of the programs. Specifically, an April 2011 study from Louisiana, entitled Fiscal & Economic Impact Analysis of Louisiana’s Entertainment Incentives documents the tremendous economic gains flowing to the state from these incentives. Similarly in North Carolina, in March 2011, a workshop entitled In Focus: Film Industry in the Carolinas, documented that "Southeastern North Carolina's film industry had generated eight television series and more than 2,300 features, mini-series and TV movies since the 1980s. The industry brings millions of dollars into the local economy and creates high-paying, skilled jobs." A study done on the economic and fiscal impacts of New Mexico’s film production tax credit program in 2009 also substantiated that the state reaped significant economic benefits from the incentives.

An early 2009 study of New York’s tax breaks for movie and television production suggested that a 30 percent credit offered by the state, along with an additional 5 percent offered by New York City, secured or created about 19,500 jobs while yielding $404 million in tax revenue, at a cost of $215 million in credits. (The study was conducted by the accounting firm Ernst & Young for both the Motion Picture Association of America and New York’s state film office.) A similar study out of Rhode Island demonstrated that rather than returning a few cents on the dollar, the tax credits brought back an average of $8 for every dollar spent.

Given the controversy surrounding the efficacy of states continuing to provide incentives to the film industry – at a time when state budgets are under so much strain – there is growing awareness that incentive programs have to be reviewed on a state-by-state basis. While they might be very effective in one state, they might not be as effective in another. Experts on the incentive programs to states also insist that if states can foster the creation of a gamut of post-production activities, the benefits to the individual state economies would be more permanent in contrast to the more fleeting benefits flowing from the actual filming operations.

Video Game Industry

In recent years, a number of states, at least 20, have introduced legislation to promote the video game industry as a catalyst for economic growth. These measures, typically in the form of tax incentives, take the form of credits, grants and exemptions. The effort undertaken by a number of universities (University of Southern California, University of Central Florida, Louisiana State University and Georgia Tech) to both expand and introduce undergraduate and graduate level degrees in video game technology is another important allied development. Most often the incentives related to the video game industry are administered by a state’s film office.

An important decision made by Louisiana State University (LSU) to promote the creative economy by melding both creative and technological forces led to LSU (and the Louisiana Department of Economic Development) inviting Electronic Arts Inc., more commonly known to gaming buffs throughout the world as EA Sports, to establish a new global quality assurance center – the first of its kind in the United States – located on LSU’s South Campus.

Along with these state incentives, the video game industry also secures incentives from the federal government. These federal tax incentives — a collection of deductions, write-offs and credits mostly devised for other industries in other eras — now make video game production one of the most highly subsidized businesses, according to certain experts.

This recent research piece, the result of a legislative information request, provides the latest trends on state incentives to the film industry (including specific statutes) in over a dozen states and details incentives provided by states to the video game industry.