State Board of Education discusses local classroom reviews

The State Board of Education began implementing a section of House Bill 1605 during its January meeting that creates a process for parents to request a local review of classroom materials. 

HB 1605 requires local school districts to create a process through which a parent can request that instructional materials at a certain campus and from a specific subject and grade level be reviewed for rigor and grade-level appropriateness. As it stands, the process Texas Education Agency has laid out for school districts to adopt requires a lot of steps before one of these reviews actually takes place.

For a review to occur, at least 25% of the parents at the campus must sign a petition requesting a review. In that case, the school board must vote on whether the review will be conducted; if at least 50% of parents at the campus sign the petition, the review must occur, whether the board approves it or not. 

The review itself is a snapshot of a week’s worth of materials in a classroom teaching the subject in question. Teachers cannot be required to spend more than 30 minutes collecting materials for review, and if the materials were already reviewed under the Instructional Materials Review and Approval process (IMRA), but not approved by SBOE, TEA will provide the IMRA report instead of conducting a new review of the materials.

TEA staff reiterated to the SBOE on multiple occasions that the reviews are intended to verify if the campus is using the materials adopted by the local school board and if the materials are rigorous enough for the subject and grade level in question. To that end, TEA is developing rubrics that will answer those questions and TCTA has reached out to TEA to become involved in the process of drafting those rubrics and other rules surrounding local classroom reviews.

This agenda item will appear again at the SBOE’s next meeting in April, and TCTA plans to submit testimony advocating for changes that further protect teachers from any negative effects of a local classroom review.

For more on January's meeting, click here.