School accreditation bill stalls in Missouri Senate after discussion of standardized tests
State Sen. Jill Carter, a Republican from Granby, presents a bill in a Senate committee earlier this year. She first started coming to the Missouri State Capitol as a public-school parent advocating for change for her son's school (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
The Missouri Senate set aside legislation Tuesday afternoon proposing alternative methods of school certification after senators discussed the impact of standardized testing and accountability for nearly two hours.
State Sen. Jill Carter, a Granby Republican, has filed the bill during each of her three years in office, but it has never passed the Senate. On Monday, she unsuccessfully attempted to add the legislation as an amendment to another education bill.
The bill debated Tuesday, she explained, is the brainchild of her time as a public-school parent.
She sought change in her local school district, talking first to parents, then to teachers and the school board. The hangup came from state officials, she said, who mandate that public schools administer a standardized test and score districts on the results.
She came to the State Capitol asking lawmakers to give school boards more autonomy. Now in the position of legislator, she has annually proposed her idea to decentralize standardized tests.
'It is putting public schools on the same playing field, giving them the same opportunities as private schools or parochial schools,' she said in the Senate Tuesday afternoon. 'What we're trying to do is get an even playing field so that they have the opportunity to be innovative.'
Missouri lawmaker seeks to remove focus on statewide standardized testing for accreditation
But her bill, which received praise from public-school groups at the committee level, has its critics in the state's legislature.
State Sen. Curtis Trent, a Republican from Springfield, told Carter that he has concerns about accountability.
'There (should be) accountability when we are writing a taxpayer check and sending it to a government school,' he said.
Carter's bill would allow schools to seek accreditation from national organizations, like those used by private schools, instead of being beholden to standards set by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
The statewide standardized test, the Missouri Assessment Program, would only be used to meet federal requirements.
Carter added a five-year sunset to the bill, hoping to win over skeptics in the Senate, but it wasn't enough to convince Trent. Districts would have no incentive to perform well without a performance report from the state, he told her.
Carter pointed to legislation that would allow public-school students to transfer to schools outside their address, dubbed open enrollment. Trent is sponsoring the Senate's version of the proposal, which has sat on the body's calendar for weeks without discussion. The House's open enrollment legislation is due for Senate debate in coming days, with a Senate committee hearing scheduled for later this week.
'This is a both-and conversation and not an either-or,' Carter said.
Trent feared lawmakers would lose their grip on public schools if national accreditation agencies became responsible for assessing school performance.
'If we decouple the assessments from the accreditation process, we have to put something else in place that this body still has control of,' he said. 'We don't have any control over these nationwide accrediting agencies, so we will have ceded all of our authority as the General Assembly of Missouri from any control over these government schools.'
Despite opposition from Trent, the bill has supporters on both sides of the aisle.
State Sen. Mike Henderson, a Desloge Republican, said he has concerns about the state's standardized test and wonders whether performance scores are accurate after speaking with his 12-year-old grandson about the assessment.
'He has already figured out (the test) didn't really mean anything to him. It didn't affect his grade,' Henderson said. 'And he's not the only one. Many of them have figured that out, so sometimes I wonder how true of a snapshot it is.'
State Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat and former educator, applauded the bill for the 'flexibility' teachers would get in the classroom.
'If we were to pass this, we would see drastic improvement and education,' she said, saying that educators are currently 'handcuffed by state tests.'
After just under two hours of discussion, Senate Majority Leader Tony Luetkemeyer, a Parkville Republican, whispered to Carter, and she laid the bill aside, saying time had run out.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
13 minutes ago
- New York Post
Looks like it's up to Hochul to kill the monstrous ‘assisted suicide' bill
New York is on track to become the 12th state to legalize 'assisted suicide' — and with the most radical law yet. The state Senate was rushing to vote late Monday on Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal's Medical Aid in Dying Act, with insiders certain the wheels were fully greased for passage. So it'll be up to Gov. Kathy Hochul to wield her veto and prevent a disgraceful mistake. Again, the New York bill breaks new ground — or sinks to a newer low. All 11 other states (Delaware became No. 11 last month) require a waiting period before you get your suicide-meds prescription filled; it's 15 days in Oregon but could be less than 24 hours in New York. The Empire State bill also has no real mechanism for tracking how many deaths it brings: Some commissioner is supposed to review a 'sample' of patient medical records and produce a yearly report to the Legislature on how it's going; that's it. Beyond the details, this is fundamentally about a reinvention of the medical profession: Out goes 'do no harm,' in comes a 'calculation' as to whether a given life is still worth living. With the state, and insurance companies, having a clear financial interest in ending 'marginal' lives and those whose care costs 'too much.' Anyone who wants to die can, in fact, find a way: This is purely about giving 'assisted suicide' the moral force of law, a big first step on the way to euthanasia for those with chronic conditions — even Alzheimer's. Canada is about to expand its law to allow 'doctor-assisted' killing in some cases where the underlying condition is mental disease, such as depression or anxiety. Advocates claim New York's bill covers only people with terminal diagnoses and six months or less to live — but 'terminal' isn't as exact a term as it sounds, and any diagnosis is simply a doctor's best guess. It's entirely appropriate that the chief Democratic resistance to this bill has been among lawmakers of color: Philosophically as well as historically, euthanasia is intimately connected with eugenics. That is: The same geniuses who imagine that humanity can be 'scientifically' improved by eliminating 'inferior characteristics' from the breeding pool also tend to think 'experts' can calculate which lives have values less than zero. Embrace that pseudo-mathematics, and soon enough the smart set will be busy 'helping' the disabled and those suffering chronic illnesses to 'realize' they're better off ending their lives. We have no idea what back-room deals suddenly made this bill a priority at the very end of the legislative session; it certainly wasn't any shift in public opinion. Hochul should do the right thing and kill the bill: At the very least, that'll force its supporters to explain why New York must have fewer safeguards than any state against abuse of a law that turns doctors into executioners.
San Francisco Chronicle
17 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
GOP House Homeland chairman Green to retire from Congress early
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The House Homeland Security Committee's chairman, Republican Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee, announced Monday that he will retire from Congress once the House votes again on the sprawling tax and budget policy bill backed by President Donald Trump. In a statement, Green said he was offered a private sector opportunity that was 'that was too exciting to pass up' so he informed House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday of his retirement plans. The move comes more than a year after Green announced he wouldn't run again in 2024, but changed his mind when fellow Republicans implored him to stick around. Green's next election would have been in 2026. Green voted for Trump's sweeping legislation when it passed the House last month. The bill is now in the Senate's hands, and would need to return to the House for agreement on any changes. Trump wants the bill on his desk for his signature by July 4. Green's delayed departure could help with the GOP's narrow margins in the House. Republican leaders need every vote they can get on their big tax bill, which they managed to pass last month by a single vote and will have to pass again once changes are made in the Senate. They now have a 220-212 majority. 'It was the honor of a lifetime to represent the people of Tennessee in Congress," Green said. "They asked me to deliver on the conservative values and principles we all hold dear, and I did my level best to do so.' Green's seat will be decided in a special election. The timing will depend on when he leaves office. Ahead of his 2024 reelection, Green had announced that February 2024 he would not run again. The decision was revealed a day after the impeachment of then-President Joe Biden's Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. But many fellow Republicans had called on him to reconsider, and he jumped back into the running just two weeks later. He was unopposed in the Republican primary and then defeated Democrat Megan Barry — the former Nashville mayor who resigned in 2018 in scandal — by more than 21 percentage points in November 2024. Green, 60, has served since 2019 in the 7th Congressional District, which was redrawn in 2022 to include a significant portion of Nashville. The city was carved up three ways in the 2022 redistricting so Republicans could flip a Democratic district in Congress that had covered Music City, which they successfully did. Green flirted running for governor in 2017, but suspended his campaign after he was nominated by former President Donald Trump to become the Army secretary. He later withdrew his nomination due to criticism over his remarks about Muslims and LGBTQ+ Americans.
23 minutes ago
Can $1,000 at birth change a child's future? A Republican proposal aims to find out
WASHINGTON -- When children of wealthy families reach adulthood, they often benefit from the largesse of parents in the form of a trust fund. It's another way they get a leg up on less affluent peers, who may receive nothing at all — or even be expected to support their families. But what if all children — regardless of their family's circumstances — could get a financial boost when they turn 18? That's the idea behind a House GOP proposal backed by President Donald Trump. It would create tax-deferred investment accounts — coined 'Trump Accounts' — for babies born in the U.S. over the next four years, starting them each with $1,000. At age 18, they could withdraw the money to put toward a down payment for a home, education or to start a small business. If the money is used for other purposes, it'll be taxed at a higher rate. 'This is a pro-family initiative that will help millions of Americans harness the strength of our economy to lift up the next generation,' Trump said at a White House event Monday for the proposal. 'They'll really be getting a big jump on life, especially if we get a little bit lucky with some of the numbers and the economy.' While the investment would be symbolically meaningful, it's a relatively small financial commitment to addressing child poverty in the wider $7 trillion federal budget. Assuming a 7% return, the $1,000 would grow to roughly $3,570 over 18 years. It builds on the concept of ' baby bonds,' which two states — California and Connecticut — and the District of Columbia have introduced as a way to reduce gaps between wealthy people and poor people. At at time when wealth inequality has soured some young people on capitalism, giving them a stake in Wall Street could be the antidote, said Utah Republican Rep. Blake Moore, who led the effort to get the initiative into a massive House spending bill. 'We know that America's economic engine is working, but not everyone feels connected to its value and the ways it can benefit them,' Moore wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Examiner. 'If we can demonstrate to our next generation the benefits of investing and financial health, we can put them on a path toward prosperity.' The bill would require at least one parent to produce a Social Security number with work authorizations, meaning the U.S. citizen children born to some categories of immigrants would be excluded from the benefit. But unlike other baby bond programs, which generally target disadvantaged groups, this one would be available to families of all incomes. Economist Darrick Hamilton of The New School, who first pitched the idea of baby bonds a quarter-century ago, said the GOP proposal would exacerbate rather than reduce wealth gaps. When he dreamed up baby bonds, he envisioned a program that would be universal but would give children from poor families a larger endowment than their wealthier peers, in an attempt to level the playing field. The money would be handled by the government, not by private firms on Wall Street. 'It is upside down,' Hamilton said. 'It's going to enhance inequality.' Hamilton added that $1,000 — even with interest — would not be enough to make a significant difference for a child living in poverty. A Silicon Valley investor who created the blueprint for the proposal, Brad Gerstner, said in an interview with CNBC last year that the accounts could help address the wealth gap and the loss of faith in capitalism that represent an existential crisis for the U.S. 'The rise and fall of nations occurs when you have a wealth gap that grows, when you have people who lose faith in the system,' Gerstner said. 'We're not agentless. We can do something.' The proposal comes as Congressional Republicans and Trump face backlash for proposed cuts to programs that poor families with children rely on, including food assistance and Medicaid. Even some who back the idea of baby bonds are skeptical, noting Trump wants to cut higher education grants and programs that aid young people on the cusp of adulthood — the same age group Trump Accounts are supposed to help. Pending federal legislation would slash Medicaid and food and housing assistance that many families with children rely on. Young adults who grew up in poverty often struggle with covering basics like rent and transportation — expenses that Trump Accounts could not be tapped to cover, said Eve Valdez, an advocate for youth in foster care in southern California. Valdez, a former foster youth, said she was homeless when she turned 18. Accounts for newborn children that cannot be accessed for 18 years mean little to families struggling to meet basic needs today, said Shimica Gaskins of End Child Poverty California. 'Having children have health care, having their families have access to SNAP and food are what we really need ... the country focused on,' Gaskins said. ___ standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
