LEGISLATIVE UPDATE – MAY 15, 2017

                    LEGISLATIVE UPDATE – MAY 15, 2017

The adoption a state budget has not yet occurred, and the budget is now in the hands of a conference committee. It’s always a bit of a “wild card” when this happens. I’ve seen some unexpected stuff come out of budget conference committees. We’re obviously watching this very closely.

The other important educational matter that is in conference committee is the accountability legislation. There are some pretty significant differences between the two chambers.

• The House versions specifies a very expensive product to measure student academic growth. The Senate version leaves more latitude.
• The House version requires all 11^th graders to take both a college ready assessment (like the ACT) and career ready assessment (like Workkeys). The Senate version requires a college ready assessment to be offered and requires all students to take the career ready assessment. I’m still wondering why all students need to take the ACT.
• The House version mandates school performance ratings on a numerical scale from 0-100. The Senate version does not specify a numerical scale.

As I have said and continue to maintain, this legislation does decrease testing some, but still requires testing beyond what is required by the federal government. The numerical scale is also problematic. As I have said all along, this proposal, even with the positive revisions made in the Senate version from the original Education Oversight Committee (EOC) proposal, is still an example of education mandates coming from folks who really don’t want to hear what teachers have to say and who have structured the EOC so that educators are marginalized.