Education policy bill headed to full House with several changes

Some things changed; some things stayed the same in the education policy bill.

The House Education Policy Committee approved HF3782, as replaced by a delete-all amendment and further amended, Thursday evening and sent it to the House Floor.

“We feel good about the bill we have in front of us,” said Rep. Laurie Pryor (DFL-Minnetonka), the bill sponsor. “Even if it’s not all the things that could have been done this year. I think the things we were able to accomplish, we should all take pride in.”

Rep. Peggy Bennett (R-Albert Lea) said this year’s bill is much improved from last year’s, but she there are several areas it falls short.

“Last session, I had a lot of heartburn. There’s only a little bit with this one,” she said. “(The bill) really lacks focus on what should be our No. 1 priority, which is literacy.”

The committee walked through the bill Tuesday and took public testimony Wednesday.

Special education teachers

To open doors for more special education teachers in Minnesota, the bill would expand professional degree, certification and work experience requirements to receive a Tier 1 or Tier 2 special education license. It would also modify the requirement for using the portfolio process to obtain a Tier 3 license and expand eligibility for a Tier 4 license.

An amendment brought by Bennett to only allow the Tier 1 license to be renewed more than two times was unsuccessful.

The bill would form a working group on special education licensure reciprocity, and, as amended, add one representative from the Minnesota Association of Charter Schools. An amendment to allow the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board to review requirements for special education licensure reciprocity was unsuccessful.

Other amendments unsuccessfully offered by Republicans include keeping the Education Department’s reporting date for MCA test results at Sept. 1 rather than the proposed Dec. 1 in the bill; giving parents and students access to those MCA test results by the end of the school year the test was taken, before the department’s public release date; and creating a short-call substitute teacher pilot program to expand substitute teacher opportunities.

“The changes to public reporting, I think, really deny our parents and the public the vital information they need when they need it,” Bennett said.

She had better success with a pair of other amendments:

• calling for the Department of Education to add a comparison of statewide assessment results among school sites and school districts to the public reporting; and
• making the transition easier when military families move to a new school district by establishing the Purple Star Schools program, a designation participating schools may earn by implementing several requirements that help students and their families more seamlessly enroll in a new school.

Rep. Kaela Berg (DFL-Burnsville) successfully amended the bill to encourage a teacher preparation program to include instruction for teacher candidates on ableism and disability justice in its professional development activities for teachers and other instructional staff.