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House Bill 3 |
House Author: Eissler et al. |
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Effective: 6-19-09 |
Senate Sponsor: Shapiro |
House Bill 3 amends Education Code provisions relating to public school accountability, curriculum, and promotion requirements. The bill includes open-enrollment charter school best practices in the online clearinghouse of best practices information established by the Texas Education Agency (TEA); requires TEA to determine the appropriate topic categories for which a campus, district, or charter school may submit best practices; and expands the scope of the clearinghouse information to include best practices of campuses, districts, and charter schools that demonstrate significant improvement in student achievement.
The bill clarifies that a principal required to participate in the school leadership pilot program for principals is a principal who was employed as a principal at a campus rated academically unacceptable in the preceding school year, and it removes a provision that previously required such a principal's replacement to participate in and complete the program.
The bill requires the State Board of Education (SBOE) to adopt rules requiring students in grades six through eight to complete at least one fine arts course as part of a district's fine arts curriculum during those grade levels, beginning with the 2010-2011 school year. The bill also requires the SBOE, each time the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board revises its official statewide inventory of workforce education courses, to revise the essential knowledge and skills of any corresponding career and technology education curriculum. The bill enumerates specific factors a district must consider in determining a student's promotion and requires each district to make public the requirements for student advancement by the start of the 2009-2010 school year.
House Bill 3 removes a prohibition against promoting a student to fourth grade if the student did not pass the statewide standardized third grade reading test but requires a student who fails to perform satisfactorily on a statewide standardized test in grades three through eight to be provided accelerated instruction in the applicable subject area and requires such a student to complete the accelerated instruction before being promoted to the next grade.
The bill requires the SBOE to designate the specific courses in the foundation curriculum required for the minimum, recommended, or advanced high school program but prohibits the board from designating a specific course or a specific number of credits in the enrichment curriculum as requirements for the recommended program, and it adds specific eligibility requirements for a student to be permitted to take courses in the minimum program. The bill also amends course credit requirements for high school graduation in the recommended and advanced high school programs. The bill requires TEA to establish a pilot program allowing a student attending school in a county that meets certain population requirements to earn the fine arts credit by participating in a fine arts program not provided by the school district. The bill provides for a student to earn the physical education credit by participating in a private or commercially sponsored physical activity program on or off campus and outside the regular school day.
The bill establishes a pilot program to provide for the award of a high school diploma to a student who demonstrates early readiness for college under an agreement between a research university and a school district in which the district will assess a student's mastery of certain subject areas and of a language other than English in accordance with the standards filed by the university regarding specific competencies indicating mastery of those areas and that language.
House Bill 3 requires TEA to establish a student assessment data portal through which a student or the student's parent can access the student's individual test data, a district teacher or employee can access individual students' test data to develop strategies for improving student performance, an authorized employee of a public college or university can access individual test data of students applying for admission, and the public can access general student test data. The system must allow a student or parent to track the student's progress on test requirements for graduation, provide test data beginning with the 2007-2008 school year, and make such data available on or before the first day of school following the year in which it is collected.
The bill requires the commissioner of education and the commissioner of higher education to study the feasibility of allowing students to satisfy end-of-course requirements by successfully completing a dual credit course through an institution of higher education.
In addition to the performance standard set by the commissioner for satisfactory performance on required tests, the bill requires a college readiness performance standard set jointly by the commissioner of education and the commissioner of higher education for the Algebra II and English III end-of-course tests and indicating the level of preparation a student must attain in English language arts and mathematics to enroll and succeed, without remediation, in an entry-level college credit course in the same content area. The bill requires TEA to develop a required test in a manner that allows a student's score to provide reliable information relating to a student's satisfactory performance for each performance standard and an appropriate range of performances to serve as a valid indication of growth in student achievement. The bill requires TEA and the coordinating board to gather data and conduct studies to establish correlation between test performance on the Algebra II and English III end-of-course tests and college readiness, requires the two commissioners to set college readiness standards for those tests, and requires TEA and the coordinating board to ensure that, beginning with the 2011-2012 school year, the tests are capable of measuring college readiness. The bill requires TEA and the coordinating board to continue gathering data and to conduct studies at least once every three years.
The bill requires TEA and the coordinating board to conduct similar studies for science and social studies end-of-course tests and authorizes the two commissioners, if the studies substantiate a correlation between a certain level of test performance and college readiness, to establish college-readiness performance standards for science and social studies end-of-course tests. The bill requires TEA and the coordinating board to report to the legislature on the feasibility of setting college readiness performance standards for science and social studies and to conduct additional correlative studies to align student performance on end-of-course tests with postsecondary credentials, college readiness, and tests for subsequent grade levels, as applicable.
House Bill 3 authorizes a campus-level planning and decision-making committee to limit the administration of locally required tests designed to prepare students to take a statewide standardized test to a lower percentage of instructional days than the percentage set by statute, and it extends the one-year test exemption for certain students of limited English proficiency by an additional four years for an unschooled asylee or refugee student. The bill requires TEA to determine the annual improvement required each year for a student to perform satisfactorily on the fifth and eighth grade statewide tests and to provide that information to school districts.
House Bill 3 revises a number of provisions relating to public school accreditation, including a requirement for the commissioner to adopt and regularly review a set of indicators of the quality of learning and student achievement, replacing the existing academic excellence indicator system as the basis for district and campus accreditation and ratings. The bill requires the commissioner to raise periodically the state standard for the student achievement indicator relating to the college-readiness performance standard as necessary to reach certain goals by the 2019-2020 school year. The bill requires the exclusion of certain students from computing required dropout and completion rates and from student achievement indicators for purposes of accreditation and accountability, establishes methods and standards for evaluating school district and campus performance, and eliminates the gold performance rating program. The bill also adds to the circumstances requiring the authorization of special accreditation investigations.
House Bill 3 extends the scope of the financial accountability rating system to include open-enrollment charter schools and prohibits the system from including any performance measure that requires a district to spend at least 65 percent or any other specified percentage of its operating funds for instructional purposes or that lowers a district's rating for failure to spend such a percentage of its operating funds on instruction. The bill requires the comptroller of public accounts to identify districts and campuses with resource allocation practices contributing to high student achievement and cost-effective operations, to rank the relative performance of districts and campuses, and to identify areas for improvement. The bill requires TEA to develop a process for anticipating each district's future financial solvency and a software program that districts can use to submit data to TEA and that alerts TEA of related factors. The bill requires each district to post its budget on its website and maintain it for a period of three years.
The bill revises procedures and requirements concerning accreditation interventions and sanctions, including the assignment of a campus intervention team and the implementation of a campus improvement plan, and procedures for the reconstitution, repurposing, alternative management, and closure of underperforming campuses. The bill also provides for transitional interventions and sanctions for the period of transition to the new accreditation system, which, except as otherwise provided, applies beginning with the 2011-2012 school year, and authorizes the commissioner of education to suspend the assignment of accreditation statuses and performance ratings for that year. The transitional provisions expire September 1, 2014.
House Bill 3 requires the commissioner of education to establish a recognized and exemplary rating for awarding districts and campuses an academic distinction designation and sets forth specific rating criteria. The bill requires the commissioner to award a campus a distinction designation if it is ranked in the top 25 percent of campuses in annual improvement in student achievement in core curriculum subjects, to award such a designation if a campus demonstrates an ability to significantly diminish or eliminate performance differentials between student subpopulations and is ranked in the top 25 percent of campuses under those criteria, and to award a designation for specific programs or specific categories of performance. The bill also requires the commissioner to establish separate committees to develop criteria for each component of the program or performance category designation. The bill also requires the commissioner to adopt and regularly review indicators of quality learning for the purpose of preparing reports for districts, parents, and teachers.
The bill authorizes the commissioner of education and the commissioner of higher education, in consultation with the comptroller and the Texas Workforce Commission, to award grants of up to $1 million to colleges and universities to develop advanced mathematics and science courses that prepare high school students for employment in a high-demand job. A college or university must work with at least one school district and one business entity and receive matching funds from one or more entities in the industry for which students are being trained.
House Bill 3 requires the comptroller to establish and administer the Jobs and Education for Texans (JET) fund as a dedicated account in the general revenue fund to provide grants to public junior colleges, technical institutes, and eligible nonprofit organizations to develop, support, or expand programs of nonprofit organizations, educational programs, and scholarships that prepare low-income students for careers in high-demand occupations.