House Bill (HB) 22 by Rep. Dan Huberty (R-Kingwood) has been filed to try to modify the state’s recently adopted "A through F" accountability system, which has been widely panned by parents, administrators, and teachers. It passed the House with broad support but underwent some fairly significant changes in the Senate. In its current form, the bill is eligible to cross the finish line in the legislature and head to the Governor’s desk this evening at 7:20 pm. However, there is some question as to whether or not Huberty, who chairs the House Public Education Committee, will accept the Senate’s version of his bill.

As the bill progressed this session, both chambers decreased the number of domains in the accountability system and increased what criteria can be considered within each domain. However, the House version of HB 22 was structured in a way to ensure more reliance on non-test-based measures than in the Senate's version. Likewise, both versions of the bill created differentiation between a D and an F rating, but the Senate version places punitive measures on a D rating that the House version did not include; ostensibly, the House wanted the state, or the Texas Education Agency (TEA), to focus all of its limited resources on the most struggling schools. The Senate's version of the bill would keep in place a largely unpopular requirement that schools and districts receive a summative or overall accountability grade, while the House version of HB 22 stopped at grading only the individual domains.

Chairman Huberty must decide if he will recommend that the House accept the Senate's language through a motion to concur in Senate amendments to HB 22, or ask the House to reject the Senate's version of his bill and appoint a conference committee to work on compromise language before time runs out. Under House rules, that decision must be made by midnight tonight. If no action is taken on the Senate amendments by midnight tonight, then the bill dies and the legislature loses its ability to make statutory changes to the current accountability system for two more years. If Chairman Huberty chooses to send HB 22 to a conference committee to continue negotiating, that move will only buy the bill about 24 more hours of life at this late date in the session. A conference committee could allow Huberty and his House colleagues an opportunity to improve the bill, but a deal would have to be struck with the Senate conferees by midnight Saturday night; otherwise, further inaction would kill the bill. Should Chairman Huberty decide that HB 22 in its current form as passed by the Senate is better than no change at all, he can accept the Senate amendments and finally pass the bill tonight. Then, it would be up to Governor Abbott to either veto or sign the bill, or let it pass into law without a signature.

As it currently stands, HB 22 contains two amendments specifically added at ATPE’s request. One adds a teacher quality measure into the accountability system that would be based on criteria other than value-added measures of student performance via test scores. The other ATPE-requested change would require TEA to add additional explanations beyond merely a letter grade to describe how each school or district has performed in each domain. HB 22 also contains language about inclusion of a stakeholder group that ATPE requested, but the Senate's version of the bill limits the role of that stakeholder group considerably compared to the preferred House language.

Stay tuned to Teach the Vote this weekend for updates and follow @TeachtheVote on Twitter for the latest developments.

Update: The House voted Friday afternoon to appoint a conference committee for HB 22.