HBA-CCH H.B. 2487 77(R) BILL ANALYSIS Office of House Bill AnalysisH.B. 2487 By: Garcia Public Education 3/13/2001 Introduced BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Currently, a student with limited English proficiency (LEP) whose primary language is not Spanish or who is a recent unschooled immigrant who has been enrolled in a United States school for less than a year is eligible for an exemption from the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS). The rules of the Texas Education Agency limit LEP exemptions to three years. Following that limitation, students must take the TAAS in either English or Spanish. In the past, some school districts have placed LEP students in special education courses so that they would not have to take the TAAS test. School districts need a way to prepare immigrant LEP students for the TAAS test so as to not jeopardize their TAAS-performance rating. House Bill 2487 provides that immigrant LEP students take the TAAS test during their second year in a U.S. school, but excludes the scores from the Achievement Excellence Indicator System calculations. The bill also requires a school to verify the exemption of immigrant students from assessment instruments on the basis of multiple indicators of a student's cognitive ability. RULEMAKING AUTHORITY It is the opinion of the Office of House Bill Analysis that rulemaking authority is expressly delegated to the commissioner of education in SECTION 1 (Section 39.023, Education Code) of this bill. ANALYSIS House Bill 2487 amends the Education Code to provide that an instrument designed to assess essential knowledge and skills must be administered to a student in the language of instruction used for reading and language arts, if an assessment in that particular language exists. The bill requires the commissioner of education (commissioner) to develop, by rule, procedures for exempting recent immigrants and recent unschooled immigrants which permit the language proficiency assessment committee (LPAC) to grant exemptions and to provide for consideration of one or more criteria, including parental verification of lack of prior schooling, other objective assessments of the student's academic preparation, or performance on state assessments, all under current law (Sec. 39.023). H.B. 2487 provides that for a student who is exempt from state assessment instruments on the basis of needing special education, a school must prepare a report based upon multiple performance indicators of a student's cognitive abilities in order to justify exempting a student on the basis of needing special education for a second year (Secs. 39.023 and 39.025). The bill requires the commissioner to develop and adopt a process for reviewing the exemption process of a school district or a shared services arrangement that gives an exemption for special education students to school districts with: _more than five percent of its students in the special education program and an average daily attendance of at least 1,600 students; _more than ten percent of its students in the special education program with an average daily attendance of at least 190 but not more than 1,599 students; or _the greater of more than 10 percent of the students in a special education program or at least five students in the special education program with an average daily attendance of not more than 189 students (Sec. 39.023). The bill prohibits a district from granting a TAAS exemption to unschooled immigrant LEP students for more than one year after they begin attending school in the United States, or no more than two school years if determined by the LPAC (Sec. 39.027). The bill exempts the assessment scores of recent unschooled immigrants who have been enrolled in a U.S. school for less than one year and who are LEP students from data used to measure a school's performance on the academic excellence indicators in the accountability system. The bill provides that the scores of these students are aggregated separately only for diagnostic purposes (Secs. 39.030 and 39.051). EFFECTIVE DATE On passage, or if the Act does not receive the necessary vote, the Act takes effect September 1, 2001. This Act applies beginning with the 2001-2002 school year.