Teach the Vote's Week in Review: Aug. 5, 2016

Date Posted: 8/05/2016 | Author: Jennifer Mitchell, CAE
Read highlights of this week's education news from the ATPE Governmental Relations team:
On Wednesday of this week, the Senate Education Committee convened for an interim hearing on ideas that might evolve into potential changes to the state's school finance system. The committee has been tasked with studying an interim charge on "performance-based" funding for public schools, as an alternative to attendance-based funding methods and finance formulas that take into account the instructional needs of students. ATPE Lobbyists Monty Exter and Kate Kuhlmann attended the hearing and provided a blog post about it for Teach the Vote this week. Also check out The Texas Observer's coverage of the hearing, which includes a quote from Exter and is linked to the blog post from yesterday. The committee has other upcoming interim hearings scheduled to discuss a variety of topics from innovation districts to technology to school choice. Follow our blog and @TeachtheVote on Twitter for the latest developments as interim hearings continue.

Commissioner of Education Mike Morath released an adopted rule this week for implementation of a 2015 law requiring video surveillance of certain classrooms serving students in special education programs. The final rule as adopted includes some changes made in response to public comments. ATPE Lobbyist Monty Exter provided details on the revisions in a blog post earlier today.
ATPE submitted written input this week to the U.S. Department of Education on its proposed accountability rules implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). As ATPE Lobbyist Kate Kuhlmann reported Tuesday on our blog, our comments raised concerns about the department's proposed requirement for summative performance ratings of schools. As with the controversial "A-F" accountability labels that the Texas legislature has already mandated that our state's schools receive, we have trepidation about states assigning overly simplistic summative ratings to schools that may not always reflect the many complex factors that contribute to a school's overall performance. Read Kate's blog post for more on ATPE's recommendations for more holistic approaches to accountability ratings in the federal rules.

Best of luck to all educators and students heading back to school this month!

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