House acts on education accountability
AUSTIN — The Texas House sought to reduce the state’s emphasis on standardized testing Wednesday by passing a pair of bills eliminating several public school exams and watering down the effect others have on grading schools and districts.
Lawmakers also voted to revamp and delay for two years a controversial grading scale that would issue schools A through F grades based on a mix of standardized test scores, student progress and a series of self-assessments.
“We want accountability in the state of Texas, but we need to make it meaningful,” said Public Education Chairman Dan Huberty, a Humble Republican and sponsor of House Bill 22.
His bill, which rewrote much of the state’s A through F measuring tool, passed on voice vote.
Scaling down both the number of necessary tests and changing the scope of the state’s main report card presents a win for parents and educators who say the state has an outsized focus on standardized tests that stresses out students and teachers while contributing to low school morale. Controversial tests
The tentative passage of both bills comes as roughly half of the state’s 5.3 million public school students prep or sit for mandatory State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, also known STAAR, exams this month. High school students testing began this week and grade school students take exams next week.
Parents across the nation have organized and fought standardized testing in recent years after an uptick of emphasis on school and district accountability programs rooted in student scores on high-stakes tests. Parents around the country have pushed back in recent years by pulling their students out of school on exam days, but Texas law bans students from opting out of the tests.
“There’s no longer any highstakes testing below the ninth grade,” Rep. Gary Van Deaver, a New Boston Republican, said to applause while giving a thumbsup on the House floor.
His bill would drop the total number of mandatory tests from 22 to 20, doing away with exams for eighth grade social studies and 11th grade U.S. history. The bill would also eliminate optional algebra II and English III tests and the retake exams for students who failed fifth- and eighth-grade reading and math and extend a pilot program for writing tests.
Huberty’s bill, HB 22, would recast the state’s A through F grading scale to reduce the number of grading categories from five to three, and lower the weight of STAAR test results from 55 percent to 50 percent. The new scale would also eliminate factors such as student attendance as a factor for grading a school, and focus data on students who have been continuously enrolled in a school district for three or more years.
The Texas Education Agency would have until the 2019-20 school year to create the new scale, effectively delaying its implementation for a year. Letter grades an issue
Parents and educators said they back the bills, but they want the Legislature to go further.
Educators, for instance, want the state to do away with using letter grades, for fear the letters can stigmatize struggling schools as failing.
“One of the questions that has to be asked when you look at the A through F system is, is it to inform or is it to inflame,” said Curtis Culwell, senior associate for the Texas School Alliance representing the state’s largest school districts teaching about 40 percent of the state’s student population.
Parents say they like the reduced number of tests, but say they worry about extending the writing pilot test without knowing whether it will work.
Lawmakers are expected to approve the bills on third reading Thursday.