BILL ANALYSIS |
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C.S.H.B. 753 |
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By: Villarreal |
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Public Education |
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Committee Report (Substituted) |
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BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Current federal law requires public schools not making adequate yearly progress for three consecutive years to offer eligible students the opportunity for free extra academic assistance through supplemental educational services. Parents of eligible students are notified by the students' schools regarding specific information on the availability of services, the identity of approved local providers, and a description of each provider's services and qualifications, and parents are allowed to choose which service they feel will be most beneficial to their student.
Supplemental educational services are provided by a wide variety of organizations. Academic researchers have reported on the characteristics of programs that are most likely to improve a student's performance, indicating that the more hours a student attends a program, the higher the chance of the student's scores improving in the given subject area, with an attendance of at least 40 hours of tutoring regarded as most effective.
Interested parties assert that adding information about which programs have successfully demonstrated characteristics that foster improvement will allow parents to make the most informed decision about which tutoring services are the best fit for their student. C.S.H.B. 753 seeks to improve the likelihood that supplemental educational services actually improve a student's academic outcome by ensuring that parents have as much information as they need to make informed choices regarding the services available.
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RULEMAKING AUTHORITY
It is the committee's opinion that rulemaking authority is expressly granted to the commissioner of education in SECTION 1 of this bill.
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ANALYSIS
C.S.H.B. 753 amends the Education Code to require a school district to include, as part of the annual notice the district provides to parents under federal law concerning supplemental educational services, information provided to the district by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) that identifies characteristics of supplemental educational services that, based on rigorous research, have been demonstrated to be more likely to foster improvement in student academic performance, including information concerning the minimum number of hours of tutoring necessary for improved performance, and that sorts, for each subject for which supplemental educational services are provided, supplemental educational services providers serving district students according to the provider's level of effectiveness in improving student performance in the applicable subject area. The bill requires TEA to develop and requires the commissioner of education by rule to establish a process for approving and revoking approval for a supplemental educational services provider. The bill requires TEA to maintain a publicly available list of approved providers. The bill requires TEA, in accordance with standards established by commissioner rule, to promptly investigate a complaint against an approved provider and promptly remove from the provider list a provider for which TEA approval has been revoked.
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EFFECTIVE DATE
September 1, 2013.
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COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL AND SUBSTITUTE
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While C.S.H.B. 753 may differ from the original in minor or nonsubstantive ways, the following comparison is organized and highlighted in a manner that indicates the substantial differences between the introduced and committee substitute versions of the bill.
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