House Committee Advances New School Standards
Air Date:02/24/2012
South Dakota Education Secretary Melody Schopp testified before the House Education Committee this morning, in favor of a bill that measures school performance and provides greater accountability for those districts. Schopp calls Senate Bill 25 "the Anti-No Child Left Behind Bill." She says it does away with the one-measurement per year standard of the Federal Law.
Schopp says, "And instead, what we're proposing is that every school would get what's called a school performance index, based on 100 points. And this hundred point index would indicate how schools are meeting these multiple indicators in these five different indicators. And then, once the school receives the school performance index, that they would be able to achieve and set their own, or we would help them to set their own goals, over a five-year span of time."
Schopp says the Department of Education will ask Federal education officials for a waiver of No Child Left Behind next week. She says 10 states have already met conditions for a waiver. Opponents to the bill claimed school boards should be the ones providing local accountability, rather than the state, while others protest a fiscal accountability clause for districts. After more than an hour of discussion, the bill advanced to the House Floor.
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