The House K-12 Education Policy and Oversight Committee began laying out specific topics for this session at its first meeting on Jan. 13.
Rep. Carlos Mariani (DFL-St. Paul), the committee chairman, said issues they’ll wrestle with throughout the session include oversight and quality of charter schools; the achievement gap between different races; the “accountability framework,” including the role of high-stakes testing such as the Graduation Required Assessments for Diploma math test for 11th graders; and teacher professional development.
Rep. Jim Abeler (R-Anoka), who leads the Charter Schools Working Group, said that although some charters have failed, the charter school model is valuable as “a laboratory as opposed to a direct competitor” of the mainstream school.
An Office of the Legislative Auditor June 2008 evaluation pinpoints charter schools’ problems with oversight and governance. These include inconsistent standards and lack of financial training for charter sponsors, conflicts of interest such as the requirement that charters have teacher-majority boards and lease aid. Mariani said an upcoming bill would likely incorporate the auditor’s recommendations.
Assessing student achievement remains problematic. A huge issue concerning school districts statewide is whether most juniors will pass the math portion of the GRAD test. A passing score is required to graduate.
The test is aligned to the 2003 Department of Education math standards, but only 34 percent of 11th graders passed a similar test last year. Rep. Denise Dittrich (DFL-Champlin) said that a workable solution could be for Education Commissioner Alice Seagren to determine a score for “partially meets proficiency” standards. The Legislature could also pass a law requiring students who do not at least partially meet proficiency to do remedial work and retest, but allow them to graduate if they meet all other local and state graduation requirements.
“Districts are very anxious to have some sort of resolution as to how we are going to proceed with this high-stakes test,” Dittrich said.
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