By Nuria Martinez-Keel, Oklahoma Voice
OKLAHOMA CITY — Education policies that passed the Oklahoma House on Tuesday would remove chronic absenteeism from school evaluations and permit scores from a lesser-known college entrance exam to qualify for state-funded scholarships.
Both measures now advance to the state Senate for consideration. Sen. Adam Pugh, R-Edmond, who leads the chamber’s Education Committee, is the Senate author of both bills.
House lawmakers spent almost an hour discussing legislation that would allow students to use scores from the Classic Learning Test when applying for the Oklahoma’s Promise scholarship or the State Regents for Higher Education Academic Scholars Program. House Bill 1096 ultimately passed 74-15 along party lines.
State law currently requires students who attend a non-state-accredited school or who are homeschooled to make at least a 22 on the ACT to qualify for Oklahoma’s Promise. Those attending a state-accredited school don’t face a test score requirement, but they must earn at least a 2.5 grade point average.
The regents’ Academic Scholars Program awards applicants who are National Merit Scholars, Presidential Scholars or who scored at least in the 95th percentile on the ACT. House Bill 1096 would change the ACT requirement to allow top performers on any “nationally norm-referenced college entrance exam.”
Multiple House Democrats debated against the bill, contending the Classic Learning Test doesn’t meet the same academic rigor and anti-cheating measures as the ACT. Only six small private universities in Oklahoma accept the test, which places an emphasis on classical literature and historic texts.
The bill’s author, Rep. Toni Hasenbeck, R-Elgin, said HB 1096 would expand access to college scholarships. The legislation specifies students would have to take the Classic Learning Test in person at a testing center, which eliminates the exam’s at-home option.
“This is not harming anybody,” Hasenbeck said while debating on the House floor. “It is only giving more students more opportunities.”
Another measure would delete the student absenteeism metric from the Oklahoma School Report Cards, which assign an A-F grade to each public school. The bill would replace chronic absenteeism with an opportunity for bonus points for giving students more time in the classroom.
HB 1412 passed with bipartisan support in a 74-15 vote.
The instructional time metric would award a school more points on the report cards if it exceeds the state-mandated minimums of 165 school days or 1,080 classroom hours.
Chronic absenteeism grades the number of students who have missed 10% or more of the school year. Republican and Democrat authors of the bill said it was unfair to evaluate schools based on whether parents make sure their children have good attendance.
“We can all agree that chronic absenteeism has not been a good measure for accountability of schools,” one of the authors, Rep. Ronny Johns, R-Ada, said in a statement. “We have worked to find a new measurement that is something within the district’s control and can provide an incentive for schools to get students in front of our state’s amazing teachers even more.”
If the bill is signed into law, the U.S. Department of Education would have to approve the change to the state report cards. The measure would take effect for the 2025-26 school year if the federal government agrees.
