| TO: | Honorable Dan Patrick, Chair, Senate Committee on Education |
| FROM: | Ursula Parks, Director, Legislative Budget Board |
| IN RE: | SB1555 by Lucio (Relating to requirements for state educator certification examinations.), As Introduced |
The bill would require each educator to perform satisfactorily on each section of a certification examination to be considered to have performed satisfactorily on the examination as a whole. The bill would require the State Board of Educator Certification to establish a rigorous minimum score indicating satisfactory performance on each examination.
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) indicates that as the educator certification examinations are currently written, scores on each section of the examination would not provide statistically valid and reliable scores. As a result, TEA indicates that the certification examinations would need to be rewritten to make the scores on each section statistically valid and reliable, and the costs to complete this task could prove significant.
TEA further indicates that any additional costs related to the redevelopment of certification exams would be offset by fee revenue generated from educator certfication examinations. To generate the required revenue, TEA indicates that fees for educator certification examinations would need to increase. Depending on the extent of redevelopment and the speed with which redevelopment would have to occur, the revenue required to offset the costs estimated by TEA would be significant, and the corresponding fee increase could be substantial.
| Source Agencies: | 701 Central Education Agency
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| LBB Staff: | UP, JBi, JSc, AH
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