House Concurs with Senate Changes, Sends HB 8 to Governor

On Wednesday, September 3, the Texas House voted to approve House Bill 8, concurring with the Texas Senate's amendments and sending the bill to Governor Abbott's desk for to be enrolled into law. 

HB 8 will require Texas Education Agency (TEA) to replace the current State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) with a new assessment system, though one that provides school districts with little flexibility and places heavy weight on scores from an individual test to determine school accountability ratings. The testing system must be in place for the 2027-28 school year and include beginning-of-year, middle-of-year, and end-of-year assessments of student performance. Schools will be allowed to use eTEA-approved norm-referenced tests for the beginning-of-year and middle-of-year assessments, but must use a state-created, criterion-referenced test at the end-of-the year. While previous versions of the bill would have further reduced end-of-course (EOC) testing requirements, the final version mostly retains them, though it does eliminate the English II EOC. 

TEA will be required to develop a through-year growth metric and provide the Legislature with a report on the metric by the 2029 legislative session so that lawmakers can consider incorporating it as part of the state's A-F accountability system. 

HB 8 puts restrictions on school districts from challenging the state's accountability rating system or initiating legal action against the Commissioner of Education or TEA. In recent years, school districts have filed lawsuits to have accountability ratings suspended, accusing the Commissioner of changing accountability metrics after assessments took place. TEA released ratings for the past three years this past August. HB 8 does require the Commissioner to adopt performance standards for the next school year by July 15 each year. Failure to do so will require ratings be issued based on the previous year's standards. 

Click here to read the final version of HB 8. 

With HB 8 passed and other legislative items addressed, the legislature adjourned the second special session of the 89th Legislature "Sine Die" (or "without a day for returning"). Of the issues that Governor Abbott listed for lawmakers to consider during the special session, only issues related to regulating THC were not addressed. It remains to be seen if the Governor will call a third special session to address that and additional matters related to flood relief. 

Other bills that would have impacted school districts remained pending and thus died with the close of the session. That included HB 17, which would have required districts to mail expensive and misleading notices regarding tax collections, providing no additional funding to do so. SB 13 would have also prohibited districts from contracting with companies who employee lobbyists, creating further restrictions on district partnership opportunities and potentially reducing public school advocacy in Austin.