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Senate Bill 1031 |
Senate Author: Shapiro et al. |
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Effective: 9-1-07 |
House Sponsor: Eissler |
Senate Bill 1031 amends the Education Code to phase out the high school exit-level test and replace it with end-of-course tests for high school courses in Algebra I and II, geometry, biology, chemistry, physics, English I through III, world geography, world history, and United States history. The bill allows the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to adopt end-of-course tests for other courses not listed, but a student's performance on those end-of-course tests is not subject to the same requirements. To the extent practicable, the bill requires each end-of-course test to allow measurement of a student’s college readiness and each statewide standardized test given in grades three through 11 to allow measurement of annual improvement in student achievement. To this end, it requires TEA to develop a vertical scale for assessing student performance on the math and reading tests in grades three through eight that allows the agency to compare a student's performance on the tests from one grade level to the next.
The bill requires TEA, with Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board input, to adopt two series of questions to be included in a separate section of an end-of-course test for use in assessing an entering college student's readiness to undertake freshman-level course work and identifying students who are likely to succeed in an advanced high school course. The bill requires the State Board of Education to establish a performance level on these special-purpose questions that indicates a student's college readiness, but it also requires that a student's performance on these questions be evaluated separately from the student's performance on the rest of the end-of-course test and not be used to determine the student's test performance for high school graduation purposes. The bill also requires the agency to ensure the tests are capable of being administered by computer.
The bill requires a student in the recommended or advanced high school program to take each end-of-course test, requires a student in the minimum high school program to take an end-of-course test only for a course in which the student is enrolled and for which an end-of-course test is given, establishes the satisfactory performance standards on end-of-course tests required for high school graduation, and includes provisions for students required to retake a test to meet those standards. A school district must provide each student who does not score at least 70 on an end-of-course test with accelerated instruction in the subject tested. If a district determines that a student, at the end of the 11th grade, is unlikely to achieve the required scores for one or more subjects needed to receive a diploma, it must require the student to enroll in a corresponding content-area college preparatory course for which an end-of-course test has been adopted, if available. A student who enrolls in a college preparatory course must be given an end-of-course test for that course, which the student may use toward satisfying the end-of-course test score requirements above. The bill requires the commissioner of education to adopt a transition plan to implement the end-of-course test provisions, providing for the tests to be given beginning with students entering ninth grade during the 2011-2012 school year, with the current exit-level test given to students in the grades above that and district accountability provisions being phased in.
Contingent on appropriations, the bill requires each district to give students in the eighth and 10th grades a nationally norm-referenced preliminary college preparation test to diagnose the academic strengths and deficiencies of eighth grade students before entering high school and to measure 10th grade students' progress toward college and workplace readiness. The bill also allows high school students, in either the 11th or 12th grade, to take, at state expense, one of the national college entrance exams used by colleges and universities as part of their undergraduate admissions processes.
The bill adds provisions to maintain test security and the integrity of the state assessment system, including provisions for record retention, random audits, subpoena powers, criminal penalties, confidentiality, the development and use of statistical methods and standards for identifying potential violations of testing procedures, and training for test administrators. The bill requires certain school administrators to report to the State Board for Educator Certification a teacher suspected of having engaged in conduct that violated test security procedures.
The bill creates the 15-member Select Committee on Public School Accountability to conduct a comprehensive review of the public school accountability system, including a study of the mission, organizational structure, design, processes, and practices of similar accountability systems in other states and the requirements established by federal law. The bill lists specific accountability system issues that must be thoroughly investigated.