Report Title:

Comprehensive School Assessment; Testing; Education; DOE

Description:

Requires the DOE to adopt statewide content and performance standards and develop a system for assessing the extent to which each school complex, and every school therein, succeeded in improving or failed to improve students' acquisition of the skills, competencies, and knowledge called for by the standards.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

H.B. NO.

869

TWENTY-SECOND LEGISLATURE, 2003

 

STATE OF HAWAII

 


 

A BILL FOR AN ACT

 

relating to comprehensive school assessment.

 

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:

SECTION 1. This Act shall be called the "Comprehensive School Assessment Act".

SECTION 2. The legislature finds that:

(1) The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires "yearly student academic assessments" in public school grades three through eight beginning in the 2005-2006 school year. The Act does not specifically mandate annual, statewide standardized tests;

(2) An emphasis on standardized testing results in teaching to the test, skews school programs and priorities, and discourages quality teachers, sometimes driving them out of the profession. As a result, it will inhibit, rather than support, high-quality learning, and may well cause more students to be left behind; and

(3) The best, most accurate school assessment system is one that is locally created and operated following established guidelines for the development and use of multiple assessment measures.

This law is enacted to meet the requirements of federal law while providing schools and schoolchildren with the highest quality assessment system.

SECTION 3. Chapter 302A, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended by adding four new sections to part IV, subpart B, to be appropriately designated and to read as follows:

"§302A-A Comprehensive assessments based on statewide standards. (a) The board shall adopt statewide content and performance standards embodied in curriculum frameworks in the areas of English, mathematics, science and technology, history and social science, foreign languages, and the arts. The standards shall delineate essential knowledge and skills that, taken as a whole, will not require more than two-thirds of typical instructional time to enable students to meet, thereby allowing time and opportunity for individual student interests and state standards designed to meet special or local interests. The relevant professional body of educators shall approve state standards and frameworks for each subject area.

(b) The department shall develop and adopt a system for assessing, on an annual basis, the extent to which each school complex, and every school within a school complex, succeeded in improving or failed to improve student performance. Student performance shall be measured as the acquisition of the skills, competencies, and knowledge called for by the statewide content and performance standards and curriculum frameworks, and the assessment of student progress toward areas of their own particular interest.

(c) Each assessment system shall be designed to fairly and comprehensively measure outcomes and results regarding student performance, including complex and higher order thinking and application, and extended student work, and to improve the effectiveness of curriculum and instruction. In its design and application, each assessment system shall employ a variety of assessment instruments, including classroom-based and teacher-made assessments, using either comprehensive or statistically valid sampling. Each school shall include in its standards implementation design a description of how it will use assessment information to improve teaching and guide professional development, and how information will be summarized for public reporting purposes.

(d) Instruments used as part of the assessment system shall be criterion referenced, assessing whether students are meeting the statewide content and performance standards. The instruments shall include work samples, projects, and portfolios based on regular student classroom work to facilitate authentic and direct gauges of student performance.

(e) The department shall provide technical assistance to schools and school complexes to design and implement the evaluation systems required by this section.

§302A-B State approval of assessment systems. Every school complex shall submit a written description of its proposed assessment system to the board for review and approval prior to implementation. Each assessment system shall include data on student achievement based on state standards that can be compared from school complex to school complex and reported in a uniform manner on forms designed by the board. The board shall not approve an assessment system unless it meets or exceeds the requirements of section 1111(a)(3) of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, 20 U.S.C. §6311(a)(3).

§302A-C Public reporting of assessment results. Each school complex shall annually report to the public how its students performed under the assessment system established by the school complex. The report shall be in a format approved by the board and shall break down the data by school, race, gender, special education, or transitional bilingual education status and such other categories as are required by the board, provided the data do not allow the identification of individual students.

§302A-D Liberal construction. Sections 302A-A, 302A-B, 302A-C, 302A-201, 302A-202, and 302A-1004 shall be liberally construed in order to meet the requirements of federal law while providing schools and schoolchildren with the highest quality assessment system."

SECTION 4. In codifying the new sections added by section 3 of this Act, the revisor of statutes shall substitute appropriate section numbers for the letters used in designating the new sections in this Act.

SECTION 5. New statutory material is underscored.

SECTION 6. This Act shall take effect on July 1, 2003.

INTRODUCED BY:

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