BILL ANALYSIS |
C.S.H.B. 1776 |
By: Ashby |
Public Education |
Committee Report (Substituted) |
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Concerns have been raised that
the curriculum used to prepare for the United States history
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CRIMINAL JUSTICE IMPACT
It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly create a criminal offense, increase the punishment for an existing criminal offense or category of offenses, or change the eligibility of a person for community supervision, parole, or mandatory supervision.
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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 3 of this bill.
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ANALYSIS
C.S.H.B. 1776 amends the Education Code to remove the requirement that the Texas Education Agency (TEA) adopt an end-of-course test for secondary-level courses in United States history. The bill requires the commissioner of education to adopt rules requiring a public school district to administer to a student in the foundation high school program a civics test that consists of all of the questions on the civics test administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services as part of the naturalization process under the federal Immigration and Nationality Act presented in a multiple-choice format. The bill prohibits a student from receiving a high school diploma until the student has performed satisfactorily on the civics test, with satisfactory performance consisting of answering at least 70 percent of the questions correctly. The bill requires a district to administer the civics test to a student when the school counselor or the teacher of the United States history course in which the student is enrolled, if applicable, determines that the student is prepared for the test.
C.S.H.B. 1776 requires the admission, review, and dismissal committee of a student in a special education program to determine whether any allowable modification is necessary in administering the civics test to the student to appropriately measure the student's achievement and, if the committee determines that the civics test, even with allowable modifications, would not provide an appropriate measure of the student's achievement, whether the student is required to achieve satisfactory performance on the civics test to receive a high school diploma. The bill requires the commissioner to adopt rules regarding the administration of the civics test that require the test to be administered electronically in the presence of a teacher, teacher's aide, proctor, or campus testing coordinator and to be scored by that person or by the district and that require the results of the test to be submitted to TEA not later than the last instructional day of the school year in which the test is administered. The bill prohibits the rules from restricting the high school grade level at which a student may take the civics test or limiting the number of attempts a student may make to perform satisfactorily on the test. The bill adds a temporary provision set to expire September 1, 2025, authorizing a student who is required to perform satisfactorily on a United States history end-of-course test based on the applicable law in effect on January 1, 2017, to elect to satisfy that requirement by performing satisfactorily on the civics test.
C.S.H.B. 1776 establishes that, for purposes of the public school accountability system, a reference in the Education Code to an end-of-course test includes the civics test. The bill establishes that satisfactory performance on the civics test as prescribed by the bill is considered satisfactory performance for purposes of the commissioner's general performance standards for statewide standardized tests and requires the commissioner to determine the level of performance considered to indicate college readiness for related purposes. These bill provisions relating to performance under the public school accountability system control to the extent of a conflict with any other provision of law. The bill applies beginning with students who enter the ninth grade during the 2018-2019 school year.
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EFFECTIVE DATE
On passage, or, if the bill does not receive the necessary vote, September 1, 2017.
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COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL AND SUBSTITUTE
While C.S.H.B. 1776 may differ from the original in minor or nonsubstantive ways, the following comparison is organized and formatted in a manner that indicates the substantial differences between the introduced and committee substitute versions of the bill.
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