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In their January 2010 meeting, members of the State Board of Education received considerable public testimony on proposed controversial revisions to the K-12 social studies TEKS. They then spent a good number of hours painstakingly offering amendments to each grade level.
After failing to complete this process during the time scheduled, the board carried it over to the morning of the final day of the board meeting, when they were scheduled to adopt the revisions on first reading. However, after spending another four hours offering amendments and getting bogged down in the process, it apparently became clear that they needed to delay the vote until their March meeting. After voting to do so, the board was able to proceed to other important agenda items awaiting final action.
Among those was the final adoption of changes to high school graduation requirements. HB 3, the omnibus state accountability system bill that passed last legislative session, made significant changes to high school graduation requirements, some of which required action by the State Board of Education to make corresponding changes to its state high school graduation rules.
The Texas Education Agency answers Frequently Asked Questions on changes to high school graduation plans.
Legislative changes to high school graduation programs were largely prompted by the desire to make the default high school graduation plan (the Recommended High School program) more attractive to students than the Minimum High School program. Texas has three high school graduation programs: the Minimum, the Recommended, and the Advanced.
Although legislators enacted laws in years past designed to steer students into the Recommended program (as opposed to the Minimum program), they found that since the Recommended program had fewer free electives than the Minimum program, some students were less inclined to choose it. These students wanted more flexibility to pursue their interests, which the Minimum program provided.
So in HB 3, the legislature reduced the number of free elective credits under the Minimum program from five-and-a-half to five (by eliminating a half credit of PE* and adding one required Fine Arts credit) while simultaneously increasing the number of free elective credits under the Recommended high school program from three-and-a-half to six.
*Note: TEA’s interpretation of HB 3’s effect on the Minimum and Advanced programs differs slightly from TCTA’s, in that TEA does not interpret HB 3 to reduce the PE credit by a half credit in the Minimum and Advanced programs. TEA interprets the effect of HB 3 on the free elective credits under the Minimum program as reduced to four-and-a-half credits.
The final result was that the number of free elective credits under the Recommended program exceeded the number under the Minimum program. However, final action at this month’s meeting by the SBOE effectively undid this change. In making the required HB 3 changes to the Recommended program, the board decided to make additional changes to the other two graduation programs, so that all three programs would be aligned.
In doing so, the SBOE eliminated a half credit of health, one credit of technology applications, and (arguably, see * above) a half credit of PE in both the Minimum and Advanced programs. This move impacted the number of free elective credits under the Minimum program, resulting in an increase in that program from five free elective credits to six-and-a-half.
The net effect is that the number of free elective credits under the Minimum program once again exceeds that of the Recommended program (however, the gap in the number of free elective credits between the two programs was decreased). Nonetheless, despite the SBOE’s action to eliminate several previously-required courses from the high school programs, school districts still have the authority to continue to require these courses at the local level.
During these discussions, another course that came close to being eliminated by the SBOE was the Integrated Physics and Chemistry course that high school students have been allowed to count as one of the four required science credits in the Recommended high school program. It was scheduled to be phased out as an option beginning with ninth graders in the 2012-2013 school year.
The inclusion of IPC as an option has long been somewhat controversial, with detractors arguing that it is not a rigorous enough course to merit counting as one of the four science credits in the Recommended program. Accordingly, at one point during the board’s discussion about changing high school graduation requirements, the board voted to eliminate IPC as an option for students.
However, after protests from several board members and witnesses who testified that IPC can serve as a valuable transition course to chemistry and physics, the board voted to keep IPC as an option for students in the Recommended program, with the caveat that it must be taken before chemistry and physics.
Also as a result of HB 3 provisions, the SBOE approved several new career and technology education classes that can be substituted by students for the fourth year of science or math in the Recommended high school program.
In the course of discussions about allowable substitutions for PE that would count for course credit, the SBOE decided to allow athletics to count for up to four credits of PE.
All of these changes will be effective 20 days after the revised rule is posted in the Texas Register, which is expected to be around late February or early March of this year.
Finally, the board voted to adopt a resolution supporting the recent decision by Gov. Rick Perry and Commissioner of Education Robert Scott to decline to apply for the federal Race to the Top fund.
Updated: 03/02/10
