The State Board of Education (SBOE) during its November board meeting gave preliminary approval to revisions to two high school graduation plans to bring them in line with the Recommended High School Program as revised by the 81st Texas Legislature.
To ensure that students are not detrimentally affected by inconsistencies in the three state graduation plans, the SBOE took this preliminary action to align the 22-credit Minimum High School Program and the 26-credit Distinguished Achievement Program (DAP) with the 26-credit Recommended High School Program (RHSP).
These changes include:
• Eliminating the requirement that students earn a ½ credit in health;
• Eliminating the requirement that students earn technology applications credits;
• Reducing the number of physical education credits required from 1 ½ credits to one credit;
• Increasing the number of elective credits to 7.5 for the minimum plan and 4.5 for the DAP.
In addition, under all three graduation programs, students will be allowed to earn up to four credits for athletics. Team sports and individual sports will be replaced with four new courses.
The SBOE also identified additional courses that may be used to earn math, science, fine arts and speech credit. A Career and Technical Education course, Professional Communications, may now be taken for speech credit under this proposal.
The SBOE approved three courses that students may use for math credit under the Minimum High School Program and the RHSP. Those are: Mathematical Applications in Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources; Engineering Mathematics; and Statistics and Risk Management. Students may use Engineering Mathematics and Statistics for Risk Management to complete the DAP requirements.
Additional courses are available for science credit as a result of the SBOE actions. Students following the RHSP and DAP programs could receive science credit for classes such as Engineering Design and Problem Solving, Advanced Biotechnology, Advanced Animal Science, Advanced Plant and Soil Science and Food Science.
To comply with new legislative requirements, the SBOE also added a fine arts credit to the Minimum plan. The current proposal calls for this requirement to begin with students who enter ninth grade in the 2010-11 school year.
All of these changes are subject to review and final approval at the Jan. 13-15 SBOE meeting.
The SBOE, which already had one of the most stringent ethics policies in state government, also revised ethics policies that govern board members and those bidding for work with the board or contracting with the board. SBOE members are now required to annually report all businesses in which they hold a substantial interest. This will provide transparency in determining whether any potential conflicts of interest exist.
The SBOE also revised a disclosure requirement to bring it into alignment with the rules of the Texas Ethics Commission. The rule now requires those doing business with the board to disclose if they have spent more than $250 during the preceding four years on a board member. Previously, the board’s rule had a $50 disclosure requirement, which caused a disparity with Ethics Commission requirements.
The SBOE adopted new English language arts and reading instructional materials, which will make 2,200 new products available for use in Texas classrooms next fall. The state expects to spend about $465 million on these materials over the next year.
The SBOE also discussed the proposal for statewide licensing for English Language Learner Proficiency Standards electronic teacher materials approved for use beginning next school year. The SBOE split the motion into directing the Commissioner to establish rules for statewide licenses for electronic publishers, which passed unanimously, and to adopt the statewide license for the publisher in question, which failed 6-9. The Commissioner noted the final rulemaking would be under the Texas Education Agency (TEA). The rejection of the site license price was seen by many observers as contradictory to the actions taken by the 81st Legislature to encourage greater use of electronically delivered materials.
Because the value of the Permanent School Fund has rebounded to almost $22 billion, the SBOE also voted to transfer $60.7 million to the Available School Fund, which provides funds to public schools. Earlier this year, it appeared unlikely that funds would be available for this transfer because of the downturn in the market.