Legislative News
April 29 through 8 a.m. Monday, May 6
See list of other advancing bills for this period here
Testing Bills Advance in House, Senate
Note: The full Senate, at press time, was poised to consider its version of HB5 , the major graduation-plan/end-of-course testing/accountability bill previously passed by the full House (Update: the Senate passed HB5 bill on Monday, May 6, info here) — and the Senate was also poised to consider a bill (SB1458) that would make major changes to TRS retirement and pension eligibility. We’ll have more on these bills in an upcoming issue.
The House passed, and sent to the Senate, these testing bills:
-- HB866-Huberty, reducing STAAR testing in grades 3-8. One of the bill’s major provisions would require that all students in grades 3, 5 and 8 be tested in reading and math, and eliminating the annual testing requirement for all students in those subjects in grades 4, 6 and 7.
Those students who failed an exam in the 3rd or 5th grade would be retested the next school year (when they are 4th or 6th graders), and a student failing an assessment in 6th grade would be retested in 7th grade. Otherwise, students who passed the exam in the year the test was given to all students would not have to take the exam in that subject the next school year.
The bill also eliminates, entirely, the writing tests in 4th and 7th grades, the only grades where writing is currently assessed prior to high school.
The bill would continue to require the 8th grade social studies STAAR and the 5th and 8th grade science STAAR tests.
Provisions are also made in the bill for administering Spanish versions of the STAAR.
The bill requires the education commissioner to seek waivers from federal testing law and regulations that may conflict with the bill’s provisions by the 2015-16 school year.
-- HB2836-Ratliff, including a provision (contained in HB866) to eliminate the 4th and 7th grade writing tests — while keeping all other current STAAR testing requirements in grades 3 to 8. The bill also requires the TEA to take certain steps to ensure state assessments for grades 3 to 8 are determined to be “valid and reliable” — and must be able to be completed by students within a specified amount of time.
The bill also limits district-initiated “benchmark testing” of students in preparation for a corresponding state assessment to no more than two benchmark tests, with college-preparation tests (such as the SAT, ACT, AP, IB, etc. exams) not counting toward the benchmark limit.
The Senate passed, and sent to the House, these testing bills:
-- SB377-Lucio, prohibiting the education commissioner from lowering the performance rating of a school or district based on the unsatisfactory performance on an assessment instrument of limited English proficient (LEP) students who have been enrolled in the U.S. for a period of two years or less, who were not assessed in their native language.
The bill also stipulates that, in counting the number of school years a LEP student can be exempted from taking a state assessment, the initial school year to be counted cannot include the school year in which a LEP student was enrolled in a U.S. school for fewer than 60 consecutive days.
Note: A similar bill, HB2004-Mary Gonzalez, cleared a House committee and was awaiting consideration on the House floor at press time.
-- SB1308-Davis, allowing and encouraging the TEA to review its current assessment contracts and to require the agency to use criteria for auditing future assessment contracts. The bill also requires the TEA to develop a comprehensive methodology for auditing assessment contracts. The bill requires all new and renewed assessment contracts to include a provision that allows for periodic contract review without notice.
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