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.
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