Honorable Harold V. Dutton, Jr., Chair, House Committee on Public Education
FROM:
Jerry McGinty, Director, Legislative Budget Board
IN RE:
HB2344 by Zwiener (relating to authorizing the use of a writing portfolio assessment to assess writing performance for public school students.), Committee Report 1st House, Substituted
Estimated Two-year Net Impact to General Revenue Related Funds for HB2344, Committee Report 1st House, Substituted : a negative impact of ($232,806,208) through the biennium ending August 31, 2023.
The bill would make no appropriation but could provide the legal basis for an appropriation of funds to implement the provisions of the bill.
General Revenue-Related Funds, Five- Year Impact:
Fiscal Year
Probable Net Positive/(Negative) Impact to General Revenue Related Funds
2022
($116,407,104)
2023
($116,399,104)
2024
($116,399,104)
2025
($116,399,104)
2026
($116,399,104)
All Funds, Five-Year Impact:
Fiscal Year
Probable Savings/(Cost) from General Revenue Fund 1
Change in Number of State Employees from FY 2021
2022
($116,407,104)
2.0
2023
($116,399,104)
2.0
2024
($116,399,104)
2.0
2025
($116,399,104)
2.0
2026
($116,399,104)
2.0
Fiscal Analysis
The bill's provisions would permit any portion of the STAAR reading assessments and English I and English II End Of Course assessments that are not presented in a multiple-choice format to be used as part of a classroom portfolio and scored by a local classroom teacher.
Methodology
According to TEA, approximately 3.3 million students take an annual reading assessment. This analysis assumes 83,000 teachers would need to be trained at a cost of approximately $1,400 per teacher if each teacher scored 20 student portfolios and 50% of districts opt into the writing portfolio. Consequently, 165,000 teachers would need to be trained at a cost of approximately $1,400 per teacher. The estimated cost to ensure consistent local scoring of certain sections of reading and English assessments to be $116.2 million annually.
TEA estimates 2 additional Education Specialist IV FTEs would be needed to coordinate the teacher training, calibration of responses, and logistics of providing local district copies of or access to student responses and collecting scores from schools. The combined annual salary for these positions would be $145,578. Benefits would be $47,342 and the Paryroll Contribution would be $2,184. Other operating expenses would be $12,000 in FY 2022 and $4,000 in subsequent years. Employee costs in FY 2022 would total $207,104 and $199,104 in subsequent years.
Local Government Impact
Districts and charter schools may be required to provide training, additional time, and financial compensation for teachers to learn and apply methods of classroom portfolio assessment. Districts and charter schools would likely incur costs to annually train teachers and to access and score student responses. There may also be costs for districts to aggregate and report results to TEA.