The Senate Education Committee on Friday endorsed legislation to bar the state Board of Education from renewing its participation in the Partnership Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, exam for more than a year after the 2015-16 school year or any subsequent school year.
The bill goes to the Senate.
For the second time in three days, the committee voted to amend House Bill 1241 by Rep. Mark Lowery, R-Maumelle, which would have required the state to stop participating in PARCC after June 30, 2015.
The committee voted Friday to expunge its earlier vote Wednesday for an amendment proposed by Sen. Jim Hendren, R-Sulphur Springs, and then voted to add a revised version of the amendment.
Under the amended bill, the Education Board is prohibited from renewing its role as a governing state or its participation with PARCC or from entering into any contract or agreement for more than one year related to statewide assessments for public school students, after the 2015-16 school year and any subsequent school year.
The Education Board would be required to take into "consideration any recommendations" made by the Governor's Council on Common Core Review before entering into any contract or agreement related to statewide assessments for public school students for the 2016-17 school year.
The legislation says it doesn't prevent the state Department of Education from completing activities from PARCC in order to conclude the 2014-15 school year, including all activities related to the scoring and reporting of the 2014-15 assessments.
At the request of Lowery, Hendren said he added back a provision to the bill saying that starting June 1 neither the state Board of Education nor the state Department of Education "shall provide access to any individually identifiable student data collected" at the state level to any of the federal Department of Education's groups if the audit is required under federal law without the written consent of the parent or legal guardian of the students.
"The state testified that they wouldn't do it anyway, so the department is OK with that," Hendren told the Senate committee before it recommended approval of the latest amended version of the bill.
Lowery on Wednesday told the committee that Hendren's amendment hurt the chances of eliminating PARCC.
But Lowery said Friday that he supports the amended version.
"The bill doesn't do exactly what I had hoped now that it has the amendment," he said in an interview. "But I think, as Sen. Hendren [said] it does still send a loud message to Pearson [the private company with the contract to administer the test]."
"It is a win to get it out of committee and to get it to the Senate floor," he said.
"I think there are probably some other things that are going on behind the scenes where the decision of whether to continue with PARCC or not can be made, irrespective of whether we put a ban on it or not," Lowery said.
More than 200,000 public school students have taken the new state-required exams.
The PARCC exams, which are to be used for the first time this year in an online format by Arkansas school districts, were tested in paper form last year.
The exams are based on a common set of math and literacy standards that have been adopted by most states since 2010, called Common Core. A consortium of about a dozen states, including Arkansas, is developing and administering exams based on that curriculum.
The new tests replace the Arkansas Benchmark and End-of-Course exams.
As with those older tests, the results from the new tests are to be used to develop academic improvement plans for individual students and to evaluate overall school performance as required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002.
Through early May, more than 5 million students nationwide in grades three through 11 are expected to take the PARCC performance-based and end-of-year tests. Well more than half of those students -- including a majority of Arkansas test-takers -- will use desktop and laptop computers.
After the committee's meeting, Gov. Asa Hutchinson's spokesman, J.R. Davis, said that "with the changes made [to the HB1241], the governor is supportive of the current measure.
"But [as] with any legislation, the governor will review the final language once passed," Davis said.
Metro on 03/21/2015