Sen. Jill Carter, a Republican from Granby, has presented legislation on school accreditation three years in a row to a Missouri Senate committee (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
A bill that seeks to take school accreditation power away from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and decrease focus on statewide standardized testing was debated Tuesday by a state Senate committee.
State Sen. Jill Carter, a Republican from Granby, filed the legislation for the third time. It passed the Senate’s education committee the past two years with support from public education advocates. In 2023, the bill was briefly debated by the full Senate but did not come to a vote.
“This is a bill that would help restore local control over education, rather than empowering central planning by DESE,” Carter told the Senate Education Committee Tuesday morning. “Local school boards should regain control over curriculum, policies and decision-making.”
Her proposal would remove a statewide standardized test as a measure for school accreditation. Similar tests would only remain to fulfill federal mandates. To measure student growth, schools would have to institute a test that measures knowledge throughout the academic year.
These types of assessments are already in use in classrooms today.
The legislation also pivots the requirement to report school performance from the state education department to the districts and charter schools.
The state would also no longer be the sole accreditation entity for Missouri districts. While the education department would be allowed to create a classification system, the state would also have at least two national accreditation agencies that districts would choose between.
Carter said the issue of the state’s oversight of schools was what led her to testify in the State Capitol years ago after her district implemented curriculum aligning with state standards but she thought was harmful.
“We have built a system of compliance for our schools, not one of freedom and flexibility,” Carter said.
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Public testimony was exclusively in favor of the bill.
Walter Hayes, a parent and grandfather from Carter’s district, said he liked the idea of giving local school boards control.
“School boards and the parents in the local communities, I think they have the best interest of those children in mind,” he said. “What we need to do is be more concerned about the education of our children than institutions like the Department of Education.”
Otto Fajen, lobbyist for teachers’ union Missouri National Education Association, said the Missouri Assessment Program became harmful under the federal No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001. The federal law, which has since been replaced, put a focus on standardized tests and holding schools accountable for students’ scores.
The federal government no longer requires statewide testing to be linked to accreditation.
Fajen said unlinking the statewide test with school classification would be “liberating for the school systems to be able to move forward in the way that really meets the students’ needs.”
Jennifer Black Cone, a former educator and self-described “survivor of school testing,” said the standardized test from the state requires teachers to “jump through hoops.”
“Tests that come from sources other than a local school district and are not authentic will not provide the results that will assist in better educating our students,” she said.
The committee did not take action on the bill Tuesday.