Missouri Senate Republicans are trying to change the way Missouri public school districts get their accreditation.
Senate Bill 360, the "Education Freedom Act," would also change the statewide assessment system.
The bill's sponsor, Sen. Jill Carter, R-Jasper, said statewide assessment testing and accreditation should be separated.
"I think, typically, three nationally normed accrediting agencies that come in and help accredit our schools, and then what you have is flexibility in that assessment," Carter said. "Right now in Missouri, those are married, if you don't do well on an assessment that's driven by the Department of Ed. (Education), then you lose your accreditation."
Carter said she drafted the bill to take control away from federal bodies and return it to individual districts in Missouri.
"We've seen a complete erosion of local control, our school boards are elected by the people they represent, and those taxpayers in that community," Carter said. "Currently, the model is built on compliance — if you don't do what the Department of Ed. says, your funding is impacted, your accreditation is impacted, and you would probably lose your local school."
Carter also said there's a big emphasis placed on standardized testing, which is placing a burden on teachers in the classroom.
"They can see there's needs that the students have, but they are so compelled to try and perform well on this one test," Carter said. "It doesn't instruct curriculum, it doesn't help them be better teachers; it's just a metric the department uses to measure compliance."
At Tuesday's hearing, all witness testimony was in support of the bill. One witness was a retired educator from Columbia Public Schools, Jennifer Blackcone.
Blackcone was vocal about her opposition to standardized testing coming from other sources.
"As a teacher, it undermined my professionalism, and my expertise," Blackcone said. "It did not allow me to prepare my students, and also it was disregarding what we were doing in the classroom."
Blackcone said the state's system for standardized testing created a barrier between her as a teacher and the needs of her students.
"A public school, in any community, is a reflection of the health of that community," Blackcone said.
How are public schools currently accredited?
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is the governing body that oversees the accreditation of school districts in Missouri. Within DESE, the Missouri School Improvement Program has the responsibility of reviewing and accrediting the public school districts in Missouri.
The measuring tool is the APR, which has two categories — performance, measured by a standardized test called MAP, and continuous improvement in areas such as college and career readiness.
The new version of the APR started two years ago, but a school district cannot lose its accreditation until there are three years of collected data.
The bulk of criticism about the APR was on the performance section because it is not a comparison over time, but a year-to-year comparison.
In addition to the state-required MAP, school districts across the state also use local assessments to track student progress in real time.
Columbia Public Schools uses iReady, which assesses growth periodically throughout the year, rather than a year-end review, which would not have results available until the following school year.
