Breaking: House Adopts Amended Senate Bill 1 on a 93 -0 vote

Late this afternoon, in less than six minutes, and to a standing ovation, speaker Greg Stumbo led the House through the adoption of the free conference committee report and adoption of the amended Senate Bill 1 on a unanimous vote of 93-0.

House Education Chair Carl Rollins (D) drew comment from Stumbo for the speed with which the conference committee completed their work. "Those conferees work fast don't they, ladies and gentlemen?" Stumbo said.

Rollins commented on the conference committee saying,

Mr. Speaker, the free conference committee report made two primary changes to our original bill, and those two changes are these:

First during the interim of the adoption of the new assessment and accountability system, there will be added some norm-reference testing. We will still use our current criterion-reference testing, but will add norm-referenced testing for the two year period.

The other major change, and this is a good change, is that this bill now requires that the K-12 system and the postsecondary system align their core content standards, so that, hopefully, we can reduce the remediation that goes on now in our colleges."

Responding to questions for Rep Jim Wayne (D) Jefferson 35, Rollins said,

We will continue to use the current ...core content test for science, math, reading, and social studies.

[Schools] will be held accountable through the No Child Left Behind federal legislation for math, science and reading.

[Scores on the interim testing] will be made public.