Good morning. Welcome to the Tuesday meeting of state board committee of the full board of the Texas State Board of Education, 09/09/2025. We'll begin today's business with a public hearing regarding instructional materials submitted for approval by the State Board of Education under instructional materials review and approval cycle 2025. Board members in your agenda, it's on Page I-nine. In accordance with the operating rules, staff is going to read the timing piece, but if we end up going long, we don't have a lot of sign ups so far.
But if we did end up going long, we will be taking a break every two hours, and I am required to brief that under our operating rules. So staff, can you go ahead and call the public participants, please? Thank you, Chairman Kinsey. Welcome to the State Board of Education meeting. Public testimony registrants will have two minutes to speak. The timer in front of you will count down the time and will show you three lights, green, yellow, and red. You may begin your testimony when the green light is on. The yellow light will let you know you have thirty seconds to wrap up.
Please end your testimony when the red light comes on, and there's also a beep that you will hear that means your time is up. If you have copies of your testimony, please provide them to SBOE staff when you are about to speak. Supporters may not gather in the front. Thank you. The first testifier registered for Item one is Alan Lohman. One additional rule, we don't do applause here at the State Board of Education. You are allowed to do jazz hands, which Vice Chair Little likes to represent.
Thank you. Good morning. My name is Alan Lohman. I'm the founder and CEO of Lohman Education, a Texas based family owned publisher. Our mission has always been simple, provide teachers with structured strategic materials that make teaching easier and improve student outcomes. Lohmann is immensely proud of the trust school administrators and teachers across the state have placed in our products. And so it was no surprise to our company when in January, Lohmann was identified on TEA's high market share utilization list. However,
it did come as a surprise to Lohmann to hear that in the following month, we were notified that participation in the twenty twenty five IMRA cycle would be mandatory. This mandate afforded our company only eight short weeks to prepare and submit our materials for review. Still, our team rose to the challenge. Our products earned a 100% scores in Tieks and ELPS alignment, as well as near perfect score on the suitability rubrics. Just one brief comment on the suitability flag. We believe this flag to be a technology error, not a true indicator of noncompliance,
and have provided further detail in the documents just distributed. But candidly, the area that we did fall short on was our quality scores. Because our supplemental math products were originally designed for a pre IMRA landscape and due to the, expedited timeline for submission, our team was unable to fully align all the necessary materials. We do not believe that our scores reflect the actual quality of our products, and we believe the 700 plus districts using our products speak directly to that. Lohmann's original plan was to voluntarily enter the 26 cycle,
giving ourselves enough time to refine our resources. Instead, we now face the risk of being placed on a rejected list, a decision that would have devastating consequences for our company. Sir, we'll go through four. We only have one. Okay. Never mind. I guess, Doctor. Ellis, you got a question? Thanks for being here. I just thought you probably didn't finish your testimony. Did you have anything else you want to say? Yeah. Yes. Thank you. That is why today I respectfully and humbly ask you to exercise your discretion and place Lohman Education on a no action list. This would allow us to return, and we commit to you that we will return in 2026 with the submission that
reflects the true quality of our products. Thank you for your time and consideration, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Follow-up? Okay. Can you speak a little bit more, I know you had a short little time there, to the timeline of when you had planned to submit, when you are notified and am I correct? You did not publishers can be put through the process because they choose to, state board member can request, agency can submit them. So how you all ended up in the process and how much time you had
to submit your product? Yes. Thank you for your question. We were notified as publishers on February 4 that we were mandated to go through this cycle and that gave us, two months to get everything aligned to to the rubric, which was just not not anywhere close enough time. That's why we had planned on submitting 26 IMRA because we knew that's how much of a lift it was going to take. And speak also a little bit to your company. Are you across the country in 49 other states,
are you Texas focused and the size of your company and the challenge that was with that short notice? Yes, sir. Thanks for the question. I was a classroom teacher here in Texas for eleven years. We started as a small family owned business, me and my dad, and now we're the size of about, 35 employees, all Texas educators. And, we only do Texas. This is our specialty. We don't do any other states. We're just focused right here in in serving the students in Texas classrooms. Yeah. Thank you. Member Brooks. Thank you. Mister chair,
good morning and thank you for being here. You know, one thing that resonates with me is the fact that you have educators writing this material and publishing that. And I think that's very important to know that we have teachers who specialize in the subject content who are publishing these materials. So I appreciate that. And also, I just wanted to ask TEA, was it a state board member who put this particular publisher on the list? Or was it If you could just answer the question, if you know off the top of your head,
in so much as it might inform her questions for the testifier. Hi, good morning. Colin Dempsey, Senior Vision Director of the District Operations Technologies Sustainability Supports, overseeing the MR review. This particular publisher did submit to the MR process voluntarily and then the board in their vote in January 2025 required your products to be part in the review. So there were I believe 238 somewhere around their products that were required by this body during that vote in January 2025. So the board who made that decision?
Board mandated. Yes. Oh, okay. Thank you so much. And and one more thing too for you, and mister Wollman is I I wanna also thank you for, there's you support 44% of the districts in my District 14 alone. And so, Microphone, please. Oh, I said you support 44% of the school districts within District fourteen. So that's really impressive, too. And I like, the fact that when teachers find something that just works, they stay with it. So thank you for being here. I thank you for shining light on that, particular part of our INRA process so that we can make the changes we need
to in order to definitely give publishers more time when they're notified in your situation. Thank you for being here. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Member Charles? Good morning. I was just going to say, can you briefly talk about some of the success you've had across the state so far and what impact it'll have to your company if we don't put you on the no action list? Yes. As you can see, we handed out, some data for each of your districts. And just to highlight a few, member Hickman and Klein at French Elementary, third grade math scores, their masters rate grew by 13%.
Member Pickren and Pearland ISD, at Sabaltura Middle School. Actually, she's not here. Member Young, and Humble at Timberwood Middle School, sixth grade math, master's scores grew by 9%. Member Ellis and Longview at Longview High School, algebra one masters grew by 11%. Member Maynard and College Station ISD at Pebble Creek Elementary fourth grade math, their masters rate grew by 10%. Member Little and Wiley ISD at Cooper Junior High, sixth grade math, their masters scores grew by 12%. Member childs in Aldine at Eisenhower,
the algebra one scores grew by 8%. Member Ravella's in El Paso ISD at Charles Middle School, eighth grade math Eighth grade math, their master scores grew by 16%. Member Francis and Corpus Christi, he's not here. Member Perez Diaz in San Antonio ISD at Fenwick Academy, the fourth grade math master scores grew by 13%. Member, Belle Madero in Lake Travis ISD at West Cypress Hills Elementary, the fifth grade math masters grew by 12%.
Member Hall and Carroll ISD at Durham Intermediate, sixth grade math masters grew by 15%. And member Clark in Cedar Hill ISD at Highlands Elementary, the fifth grade math masters rate grew by 11%. Member Brooks in Northwest ISD at Claire Love, their fourth grade math masters rate grew by 13%. A member at Kinsey in Midland ISD at Santa Rita Elementary, the third grade math masters rate grew by 8% And I can just tell you as a former educator when you see scores grow, you know that's kids confidence growing And part of that success was the resources that
they used. And so I know, you know, teachers want to keep these materials because they want to keep kids growing. So thank you for your question. Member Higman? I'd like to follow-up to Member Child's question and thank you for those results. So it sounds like you have good results from your product, but there's a disconnect with the quality rubric. Can you talk about what does the quality rubric require that you're not doing or what are you doing differently that sounds like a quality material and you're getting good results? Can you just talk about that? Yes. The quality rubric,
it's the supplemental math is what we applied for. And the quality rubric, a significant portion was on what, teacher supports were embedded in your resources and they're all really great ideas. It's just stuff that we haven't built into our resources yet. And so we have a great curriculum, we just haven't built out, you know teacher guidance in this area and teacher support in this area and so it was it was enlightening to see the rubric and like oh these are great ideas we just that short time frame that we have was enough time to get those created And then on the list I thought you said you were put on the list
but I think TEA said you put yourself on the list, can you just clarify? Yes, so we knew we wanted to submit for '26 Okay. And we were told that, hey, in '25 you can submit and then you can withdraw when you, you know, if you're not ready. Okay. And so we wanted to get our feet wet, go through the initial couple steps because it's pretty complicated. And then we planned on withdrawing and then all of a sudden we were told you're not you're going to be required to go through it this year and so we were really surprised. Okay and then, my last question I think there's a law change in the last session.
Currently, there's all these books that have not gone through IMRA. I would say almost all the books being used in Texas have not gone through IMRA. It's a brand new process. We've done one cycle. We're doing our second cycle. So all of those books don't get the $40 don't get the extra $20 and that's where you are today, correct? Yes, sir. Okay. And none of those have been tested for quality suitability. But if you go through the cycle can you just talk about the new law change and what impact it would have on you if you're on the accepted list, the no action list, or the rejected list?
Yes sir. If we get on the accepted list, schools that use our resources are allocated more funding. And so it would be beneficial for our districts to go through this and to get approved. And then with house bill 100, if we get on the rejected list, districts are forbidden from using any funding on our resources. So you're talking about we're trying to help out our customer and then now it it might really be detrimental to them. And so, no action list would afford us the time to your point to address the quality rubric issues to have teacher supports for 2026.
And would you say the no action list is kind of similar to the status quo today of all the other books that have not been gone through any sort of MR process? Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. I do want to follow-up to a question Mr. Hickman asked. And you were talking about your you were hit on the quality rubric as far as your teacher supports, correct? Yes, sir. And I believe that's in the rubric under Support for All Students with that section. But I want to give you a chance. You've got the microphone here. You've got us here. I think you were lower in some of the other areas of the rubric too.
So were there other issues that you see room for improvement other than teacher support? Teacher supports was was definitely the main area where we had room to grow. You know, our lessons are beneficial to the teachers, but we didn't necessarily lay out exactly on every lesson how can we support, ELL learners on this specific lesson, this specific, skill that they're working on. So, that was really the main area. Any further questions, members? Doctor Clark. I just wanna make a statement and say district thirteen uses 58% of your program.
And looking at these results, they're really great. Even a lot of our charter schools have 24, percent master's raise on theirs, 18% in HEB ISD. So we have substantial results in here. So thank you for being here today. Yeah. Thank you so much. Anyone else? Thank you, sir. Thank you all. Okay. That concludes item number one for today. We're on to item item number two, which is update on the review of instruction materials submitted for approval for the State Board of Education under IMRA Cycle 2025.
Board agenda page I-ten. And we have Colin back to the mic. Members. Colin Dempsey again, senior division director for DOTS here at the agency overseeing the MRAA review. I wanna orient you to the new binder on your desk, which are the items related to the instructional materials review and approval process. So that would be the the Tuesday item binder. Last week and then and then on Friday, we shared, the digital versions of these materials, but just wanted to make sure that you had them, in in paper form for in order to review. Today,
we are are going to be sharing out a little bit about how we got to this point in this year's Emera process, and then also, give an overview of the layout of the preliminary MRR report, which is different from last year based on on feedback from this body, and then get into next steps. So what happens next? What happens between now and the vote in November? So as a reminder, this MRAA process involves multiple stakeholders. We have the State Board of Education here at the top in the gray bar who, helps us to recruit the reviewers who conduct the reviews.
You all select reviewers, the agency supports you in assembling teams and training those reviewers. And this year we've added a another row of stakeholder which are the suitability reviewers. And so we have a set of, quality reviewers. It's five individuals per assigned product who review for standards alignment. So, do the materials meet the the TEKS or the English language proficiency standards. They also check for any factual errors as two plus two equal four inside the materials, as well as review for quality. So we've referred to that quality rubric already this morning.
Suitability reviewers are teams of three also assigned to to a product, and these folks are looking for compliance with the suitability rubric where it has both, suitability noncompliance, things we do not want to see, red flags in the materials, as well as for suitability excellence indicators, things that this body has decided you do want to see in instruction materials. And so, while we have suitability reviewers there, they're also looking for factual errors, and can flag that for us as well. And so, the final group here is public feedback. So we,
launched public feedback in early May, I believe, and we collect those comments, submit them to publishers, publishers have the opportunity to respond. All of that has now been combined into we're not all the way to the green check mark. We still have a couple more months, but, we've gotten to this preliminary report for your review. So that timeline again, we called for materials in December 2024. In January, this body deliberated and required some materials to be reviewed this year versus voluntary submissions.
In February, the agency, as as our testifier just noted, in February 4, we notified all publishers who would be participating in the review and then got to work. In between May and July is when we had our MR reviewer kickoff, and began reviewing the materials for those attributes that we that we showed on the last slide. We've now arrived in September where we have the preliminary results from that work over the summer as well as a round of appeals. So we already have a round of appeals built into these material, this report, and we'll have more updates and recalibrations of the reports following this board meeting.
That will lead us to November, where this body will make a decision on which materials to place on the list of approved instructional materials, which materials to take no action, and which materials they'd like to place on the list of rejected instructional materials. Following that vote, the agency staff will will work with those publishers who are placed on the approved list and begin executing contracts. That contract is between this body and those publishers, and local school districts, around the state of Texas use that contract. They piggyback on the back of that contract to purchase instruction materials on the approved
list with, the new entitlement funding that come that came from House Bill 16 o five in the eighty eighth session. So that's where we've been, and we're here now in September and that that red star and where we're headed in November for the final vote. And so as a reminder, what are we looking for in the MR process? We have, six major facets of this review. The first, being standards alignment percentage. Do these materials are they designed to fully cover for the teacher to teach and the student to learn the,
student standards in the state of Texas, and where English language proficiency standards are required. This year, we we reviewed for the newly implemented ELPS. As you may recall, those were those were recently updated and are now effective, and so that's part one of this review. We also have, suitable and appropriate. So that's, again, the review of the suitability rubric. We also then apply the quality rubric, except this body is passed, and and provide a review. Also, checking for three queuing in k through three phonics and structural materials, and then also looking for those factual errors.
The items in the box are the ones that are reported out on this preliminary report. The other two are ones that the agency checks back on after the November vote to ensure compliance. If materials aren't compliant, we come back to you all with an update there and and take some other next steps. So let's look at this year's review by the numbers. In total, we reviewed 304 programs, with 34 unique publishers. We reviewed a 142 last year. So we've we've nearly doubled or doubled actually the amount of products that were reviewed year over year.
We had a total of 520 quality reviewers and 240 suitability reviewers who participated in this year's review to review those 304 products. And there in the graph, it's a bit hard to see on the screen, but, on slide five in your binder, you can see the majority of submissions this year were in the the newest category for MR 2025, which was supplemental math products. So you can see that large bar on the right hand side, the dark blue indicating products that were designed to be delivered in the English language, and then, the dark gray bar indicating the kind of products that are designed to be delivered
in Spanish language. The new addition on the, process side this year for MR was the inclusion of suitability reviewers. And I think the headline here is that they were worth their investments. You may recall last year that, this body recommended that we add suitability reviewers to this process, giving one set of a team of five the responsibility for all four of those, metrics, right, was a was a big task, and I think we realized and so by splitting the responsibility, the shared responsibility of review, I think our reviewers came back with a much more detailed heat map,
if you will, of concerns inside of the materials. So this graph is a breakdown of suitability prohibition flags. As a reminder, there are, specific flags, meaning I've seen it once in the materials, it's very individual thing, versus thematic flags, which is I I seen three or more examples of this as a reviewer, so I'm gonna flag that as thematic so that, you know, we're not getting a hand cramp, marking it each time inside of the materials. So, overall, of the products that were reviewed, there were 420 total flags. The dark bar representing the,
specific flags and the lighter bar on top of this bar graph, representing the thematic flags. And there you can see the majority of flags came from, the prohibition on common core section of the suitability rubric, and but there was at least one flag in every single category of of the suitability prohibitions. Reviewers also, I think, were were beneficial in helping us identify where materials met your, your bar for suitability excellence. And so, as part of this body's deliberations, late last year, landed on, that materials do actually need to have these suitability excellence indicators.
It's not just a nice to have, but actually a requirement, and, publishers responded and and reviewers, found that evidence and and marked it as such. So a total of 1,593 positive flags. These are the things we want to see in the instructional materials. You'll note that it was only in section two, which is alignment with public education's constitutional goals. There were no materials that were designed for sexuality instruction, so we wouldn't have expected to see any on the second bar, which is zero. And so, I think this this just speaks to the thoroughness that our suitability reviewers were able
to attack their assignments over the summer. And again, those folks were were appointed by by y'all, And I think also the response from publishers to ensure that this is in their materials and that is marked as high quality for including, including these things. So that gets us to, a one page report for every single product. So there are you in your binder, and apologies for to the trees. In your binder, we printed out the the one page executive summary for every product. On the left hand side of of my screen up here,
we have examples of those one pagers. This year, our our team working with, a few of our contractors were able to get these online in a web based form, so that, you know, the whole state doesn't have to print out 304 pages, but rather you can go on to sb0e.texas.gov/imra,imra, click on imra cycle 2025, and this will be the top link. You're now able to drill down into specific products and instead of just seeing a count of flags, so let's say a product had, two suitability excellence flags,
you can click on that number and it will load the report of the two flags, a description of where those flags were found in the materials, a link to those materials to review the flag in context, as well as any response if we received one from the publisher. So I think this is a big leap in our ability to get you all information, so that it is easier to review and that you can, hopefully, feel much more informed when when taking final votes in November based on these preliminary reports and the ability to drill down and really understand, the data behind the count of numbers on the summary report.
And so they're laid out very similarly, and I'm going to, walk through, each section of the report just to to make sure that that you all and and folks listening at home are able to understand exactly what these reports are are trying to convey. So, at the top page of every report is the report header. It starts with the publisher's name and the program title, followed by a bar that gives us a description of the material. So we have, is this material type a supplemental product? Is it a full subject product? Is it a partial subject product? We then have the 13 digit ISBN or part number,
and then we list the format. I think this is in I think, member members Francis and member Brooks have asked for this in the past, and so we we try to include that here on this headline report of, at the end of the day, how will students interact with these materials? Are they meant to be on a computer? Are they meant to be digital products? Or are they meant to be print products? And so we've we've listed that attribute of the products here. And then finally, we have a a new a new section about adaptive versus static, and this was added because of our supplemental math review this year,
which is, do the materials are they responsive to student input? If a student answers a question correctly, does it send them to a different question than if a student answered a question incorrectly inside of the materials? We call that adaptive versus a static product that is fixed content. You can have a printed product that is adaptive. Right? It can be a bit like a choose your own adventure book where it says, if the student does this, then jump to this lesson, that can be considered adaptive as well. So we wanted to make sure that we call that out because, depending on the attributes in this top section,
the numerators for the percentages, sorry, the denominators and the percentages that we have further in the report will change. So, there were different rubric sections for adaptive products versus static products, and so I wanna make sure that that y'all were aware of that distinction there in the top. That's our header. And then moving down into the report, we have a rating overview. Last year, what what I and staff heard from this body was, we'd love just a headline that says, what are all of the things you all reviewed for? What are things that we need to be worried about?
Is there an issue with compliance with phonics rule that wasn't as visible on our report last year. And so we hope that this meets, that need and and helps to clarify which products you need to pay close attention to before your vote in November. And so across this rating overview, we have the TIX score. This is the percentage of the TIX covered. If it was a supplemental product, the the publisher was given the option to tell us which TEKS they think they cover. And if they said we cover five of them, then the 100% would reflect that they covered all five that they said they were
going to cover versus a full subject product, which had to cover all of the, student expectations regardless. We have next the English language proficiency score. This is the percentage of coverage of the of the ELPS. Coverage is not required as a reminder for supplemental or for Spanish language programs, and so you'll see a a not applicable or an n dash a in that section if it truly does not apply to that product. Otherwise, you should see a percentage score. And as a reminder, the the you all as a board have to see a 100% or NA in
those columns before you can even consider a product to be placed on the approval list. That's a little too small to see that one. Alright. Next, we have phonics rule compliance. So, there are are rules in in, 19 Texas administrative code chapter 74 on phonics requirements. This section indicates whether or not a publisher scored a 100% or not on, that that section of the rubric. I think for most publishers in in our LA, it's it's section four of the quality rubric. And and publishers have the opportunity to appeal this section and provide new content,
which I'll get to in a second. But, that's that's one where last year, if you recall, we had to to hold the special in December to address some of these because we didn't feel like y'all had the enough information at the time to make that call, and so we're hoping to get it here in the headlines that a special isn't required in in December 2025. Next are, flags for three queuing. So, this year, we opened the the three queuing review to all reviewers, suitability and quality alike. And so similar to the suitability flags, there can be a flag,
the publisher can respond, the agency is not gatekeeping which of those flags gets through to you all on this report. But what we will do is get to you you the publisher's response to that potential flag, and then if it is not addressed to pie or sorry, if it is addressed by November, that category will change from, no flags or not applicable to or sorry, flags to no flags, just so that you know that there's an opportunity for publishers to address that three queuing. If you do see accounts there, you can scroll into the digital report, see that flag in context,
understand exactly what the reviewer saw and maybe what, made the reviewer submit that flag for three queuing. I think overall, we had about seventy, seventy ish, seventy six three queuing flags across all the products. And again, this only applies to, products that would cover k three phonics instruction. Next, we have the count of factual errors. This is the count of errors that were found by the MR reviewers. A higher or lower number here really isn't relevant. All anything that's in this box has to be corrected by the publisher as a
condition of approval. So, the only thing it might tell you is that a higher number, the the publisher has a bit more work to do, before the November vote to make sure all of those corrections are made. But, in general, that's just to note how many how many factual errors that the Emma reviewers themselves found. Then we get into suitability noncompliance. So the red section, we try to make the the text of the the input the the field rather match. So green means good, red means bad. But the if you do not find flags in the report for suitability non compliance,
that's, some double negatives there, but essentially, it was clear of any suitability prohibitions. If you see flags in the report there on the online version, you'll be able to click in, see the description of the flag, again, see it in context and the attributes of, that flag by our suitability reviewer. Next, we have suitability excellence. The board did not require suitability excellence items to be found in, supplemental math products as part of y'all's vote last year, and so you might see not applicable like I have in this example. However, some supplemental math publishers did still include
excellence material. So, you might see a green count there. If you do not see, if you see a red, letters that say flags not found in the report, that's one where the publisher did not meet that expectation of including excellence, indicators. And then finally, we have a a count of public feedback. So this would have been any public comment received, from the course of May and the sixty day time frame that we leave open for those. I'll say that this year in total, we only had about forty forty five, 46 public comments for all products. So this was, markedly lower than,
than last year's, public comment field. Next is the quality rubric section. This section gives you a percentage score for each indicator of the quality rubric. These will change based on the subject matter. So for mathematics, you'll see that the six categories there, reading language arts, full subject jumps to the eight, and then phonics back down to five categories. The you'll note that some of the, again, numerators and denominators will will shift based on, or sorry, available points in that section will shift based on some attributes of the particular product,
but we've tried to give you an apples to apples comparison by including the percentage on the right hand column for some of these sections. Ahead of the November, we'll have the narrative text and and in line evidence for each one of these sections to share with you. So if you see one that is concerningly low, or one that you want to learn more about, we'll be able to share that information after we recalibrate the reports, and you'll receive that well in advance of the November board meeting so that you have that information. And then, at the end of the report, we have the counts of noncompliance flags and suitability excellence flags.
This is a bit of a of a repeat or a breakout even of the items in the headline section for the quality review. You'll note that in your report, there's a grayed out section to the right that says, flags not addressed, and that is will update in November to say if the publisher did or did not address the concern that, was raised with the original flag, because, again, publishers have the opportunity to respond to those materials. Some of them are still in the midst of appeals at the moment, and so we'll have the final count for your consideration, ahead of the November meeting. So I'll pause there for,
just an overview of the report report structure. There's questions on the information inside of these reports that I can help to answer before getting into next steps ahead of November. Member Higman? Thank you, Chair. Good morning. The $142,000,000 and $3.00 $4,000,000 what do you call those? What it Individual products or programs. Products, okay. So can you talk through the three zero four ballpark figures, how many came from publisher submissions, from SVOE submissions, from TEA,
I don't know, submissions requirements? I don't want to misquote it, so I can pull it up for you. I can come back to that one. I'm just curious how many are voluntary versus I think if SBOE or TEA puts you in, you're involuntary. And we had a long discussionargument in here about positive suitability flags and relevance to math supplemental materials. What did we decide? Are we But they are not required, but this report does show if a publisher decided to add them. Okay. But when I think the commissioner gives us a list of
suggested His recommendation. Recommendation of accepted, you know, take no action approved, take no action rejected that will not take into account suitability flags for a math supplemental? Correct, yes. Okay. Last time I heard through the grapevine, publishers could correct three things or three errors or three there was a number three I heard. Is that still in place? Was that true? Has that been changed? Can publishers can you talk about if a publisher got a bad score on quality or suitability, can they fix that now? Can we take into account the improved version in November?
Yes, my next two slides on, last year we had, as part of the process there were successive appeals windows. So we, reviewed four standards alignment and then had a forty eight hour turnaround for publishers covered a standard. That that was not a great policy, publishers felt rushed, understandably, and so this year instead we, created one large appeals window, and as we finish parts of the process with reviewers, we release that information to publishers so that they could start to formulate their responses.
So, all that to say that the publishers had a lot more lead time this year to consider reviewer feedback, some of it sooner than others, right? Standards alignment came much sooner than the end pieces of the quality review. But publishers were given the opportunity to appeal, a percentage of their quality, quality rubric categories. And then anyone who had that section four around phonics compliance were were able to appeal that regardless, because we know that that was something that that caused an issue last December. And so, in total, yes, publishers were given,
an almost final version of the report you see in front of you around, this timeline, and then had the opportunity to request an appeal. Some of those appeals are still in process for alignment to instructional sorry, alignment to standards. And but we have for the majority, addressed any quality appeals, where publishers were able to either provide new content or point reviewers to a different component inside the materials that they believed covered that section. So, all that to say there are a couple publishers who made the threshold for TEEX
and can resubmit new content and and we'll be reviewing those of the course of the next couple of weeks but publishers have now had their opportunity to appeal their quality score before the November vote. Okay. So appeal could take two paths. One is what I sent you is great, take another look at it, I should get a higher score. The other is I think what Amy used to give us was a corrections report where they got a low quality score and they have the opportunity to make changes that we can consider the changes in November.
That's correct, yes. So there are you can either point us to a new place or give us new content are the two options for the appeal. There's a third option which is, hey, you all made an error in your technical reporting and we address those as well. Okay. And my last one is HB 100. We talked some about legislative intent yesterday. I'll see if you know. Is the intent for rejected list for it's not high quality? Or is it rejected list should be something that's terrible? Does that make sense?
Does make sense but I think it's a question for the members around the circle. The, the laws that's written I can tell you the impact of making a decision of putting something on a rejected list now with the addition of house bill 100, which I have here on the screen. So for for those who are unaware, house bill 100 from the eighty ninth regular session, prior to this, districts were able to adopt and purchase any material that was placed on the list of rejected instructional materials, maintained by by the State Board. With the passage of this bill, there is now restrictions on the use of funding. So, a school district may not purchase using any dollars,
not just their instructional materials technology funding and not just the new entitlement funding, but $0 on, anything placed on the rejected list. They are also restricted from adopting or using products, so maybe they already bought it. If it's placed on the list, they have to go find another product and and discontinue use of that product. If it's placed on the rejected list. This this bill had had several effective dates, which is the next slide, which gets to your all's decision making. Essentially, any material that is placed or maintained on the list before, the start of next school year, would be one that that districts could not use or purchase.
So, your vote of putting something on the rejected list for this November would have this impact, on a publisher's sales ability inside of the state, whereas before, it was just a a district could not unlock the entitlement funding that came with house bill 16 o five. So that that is a difference now that this bill is effective, and and has that timeline of the start of next school year. So the the impact though is it's a high stakes game. For the Publisher, yes. We're doing math. So it's 446 products that are either last cycle or this cycle.
Those have been through the process and have the ability to get the extra $40 and $20 or the possibility of being placed on a rejected list and not being used in Texas. Do you know how many products there are in Texas today? There there are thousands, I don't have the the account on top of my head but I can get it for you. Okay. So it publisher may say I I want no part of IMRA. I'm I'm not gonna take that risk, I'll just stay on the, you know, stay with the status quo. That's correct, but the board could force the material to be reviewed without the publisher's consent.
Okay. Yeah. Understood. Okay. Last thing. Are all the links to the products available for us? Yes, sir. On on im.ta.texas.gov. And we can we can I'm sorry. On sb0e.texas.gov. And we can share that again with you. And we have all the logins there or we can get those? Correct. Great. Thank you. Colin, quick question for me. So talking about the the you said the board could force a product to be reviewed. But if the way it worked out this year, the board used up all the slots by forcing products to be reviewed.
If we had done zero, like we did in year one, can you talk about what happens then with the application of the, of the list of seven criteria? Yes. The prioritization protocol. Yes. Thank you. We are required by law to review at least 200 products. And so if if this body doesn't have any required materials, and let's imagine that no one submitted an application, the agency would be forced to go find 200 products to review as part of this process. I don't think we are anywhere near that scenario. We had over 600 submissions last year.
We're adding hopefully an item for today, a few more categories of product. And so I don't imagine that being a challenge until many, many years in the future. But if if this board, didn't have any recommendations and there weren't any voluntary submissions, we are required to review at least 200 products per per year. Yeah. Doctor. Allison and Member Pickering. I wanna dig deeper into this slide here. Can you slide? Yeah. Another one we had. Can you speak a little bit more in plain language there? Section six is straight from the bill. So as it applies for for next school year.
But we're in IMR '25, we're reviewing material that will go into effect next school year. So does section seven say that same thing? Are these is that how So we're we're reviewing IMR 25. To mister Hickman's point, he said we've reviewed some material last year. This does not include material rejected in IMR 24. That's clear. Right? Well, it says placed or maintained. So if it's maintained on that list after this point, then it yes. It would include rejected instructional materials from IMRa 24. Really?
Okay. We we can ask legal for it, but that's that's been our interpretation of that. Placed or maintained. And if we are saying we can maintain, can we is that implying we can take something off the rejected list? Yes. I believe there's, we developed a process for removing something from the rejected list in, chapter 67 of of administrative code, which would be a majority vote by this body and and having the product go back through the IMRA review. So they would have to go through Correct. Through the entire entire review. Okay. I think I've got some other questions.
I'm gonna hold off for now. Amber Picker? Yes. Thank you, mister Cherry. Can you hear me? Okay. So I have a question about process on the reports. Because, I'm seeing a couple of things here. Whenever you were educating or training the reviewers, were they trained in what state law says? And I'll give you an example of why I'm asking this. For example, like in the Bluebonnet Learning, we see several suitability flags. And when I look it up, which, by the way, thank you for the comprehensive report you sent me last week.
When I look it up, the flags, the nine flags are there are directly related to the bible lessons that are required by state law when teaching the crossover of civics or social studies. But yet in my suitability report I have nine flags for non compliance. So that's my first question is how are they trained? The what is state law and what is not state law because, if I just look at the report and not actually go back and do the research, I would think that there really were nine violations here. But it's not. It's really it's good. It's a green flag. It's not a red flag. It's what makes it compliant with state law.
And then the other thing, another flag in here that I saw was, a prohibition on forced political activity, which is a red flag, which is a negative. And when I actually went and did the research on what that flag was related to, it was teaching children to say the pledge of allegiance, which again is required by state law. So if I look at solely at this report, it's a negative flag. In other words, don't approve this, when really it should be a green flag. So how were our how were these reviewers trained? Because if the training didn't happen correctly,
then I have a very flawed report. So to your first question on how they were trained, so we started with asynchronous, training as soon as we had suitability reviewers contract signed, launched with asynchronous training and then brought them to Houston, to do an in person kickoff where we had, quality reviewers had a four day training, suitability reviewers a three day training in person, where I personally presented on on each of these sections and and how they should be interpreted. To your, so that that's how training occurred. And then we had ongoing advice from our staff and our and our third party
contractor who helps us run this review, to advise and and and double check. What we did not want to do was put our thumb on the scale of any suitability reviewer. So, unless the flag was spam, meaning it it was, the same thing 40 or 50 times, and we said, oh, that's actually thematic versus specific. We did not want to, filter, if you will, any of the flags that came from reviewers because because the the report details what the rebar saw, what they flagged, and then the publisher's response. And so, I'll note that these are just preliminary reports.
Any flags that weren't addressed sorry, that are addressed before, the November vote will go away. But we thought it was important to show you everything that suitability reviewers, presented because they were appointed by this body, and we wanted to respect y'all's authority there. So I think that's and and if we need to fine tune the training, that's what I'm hearing as a piece of feedback on those particular sections, and and we can certainly do that. But I I wouldn't yeah. The the information is there if if we're we're digging into it and and really looking at each product. Calling, when I look at just this kindergarten,
Bluebonnet Spanish, kindergarten, I have at least 10 red flags which are no go, right flags, reject flags. That really should be 10 green flags according to state law. So we need to do a lot better training of our reviewers. And then also I have a question on three queuing because in the HMH product, kindergarten or I'm sorry, second through fifth grade, it seems to be thematic that it still contains three queuing. And so does the publisher know that three queuing is illegal in Texas? And does the, does the reviewers know that that, three queuing is illegal in Texas?
Because it's it's flagged and reported at the top as thematic, but then whenever I look at the, the actual flags, I don't see it. So how did y'all differentiate between thematic and actual just like one z two z flags? Can you, remind me which report you're looking at so I can pull up the same one? Yes. I'm looking at the IMRA preliminary report, HMH education grades two through five. And you said kindergarten or two two design? Kindergarten, second, I think. The other one doesn't say it as fourth grade, but then it picks back up, then it picks back up. So where you see three queuing,
it it says flags and report. And then whenever you get to Sorry. Their Spanish language product or their English language product? This is English. Okay. And then whenever you get to three queuing, fourth grade, it says not applicable. So I guess they fixed it in fourth, but yet we still see it in, second and third. The the practice of three the the ban on three queuing in the state is specific to k three reading instructional materials. So fourth and fifth grade, it it does say not applicable because that's what the statute says, that it's only k through three phonics instruction and foundational literacy skills.
So you won't see in fourth and fifth grade any flags there. Reviewers are aware it's a it was Whole three hour session at our training about three queuing. And and in fact, many of the quality reviewers have attended the state's reading academies, which that that's a big part of it is is understanding that practice and and why it's not helpful to students. But I'm happy to clarify, like, to get with you during a break to look at specific ones if that's helpful. And will you also send each member of this board the, the training that they received online? Yes, ma'am. So we can also see that training and may receive that training.
Yes. Okay. And then my next question is actually for the chairman. Can we revisit the rule on, not having supplemental math part of our suitability rubric? Because there is currently a TEA approved, supplemental math, OpenStax OER, that several parents have reached out to me that they have concerns with. And unfortunately, because we took that vote last year, I can't really help the parents who are reaching out to me. So if we could bring that back to this body? I'm not understanding the question because the suitability rubric does apply to it. I think that you said earlier that
No. We voted last year that suitability rubric would not apply to math supplemental. And I want to have a reconsideration of that vote at some point, please, because there are math supplementals out there that parents are reaching out to me about that they're very concerned about. And we've kinda given that authority away. I'm happy to look into it. Do you have a do you remember when we took that vote so I can go look up what happened? Kala, do you remember when that vote was last year? The vote on not including sorry, not including supplemental math in the suitability excellence indicators?
Was that November? If memory serves November 2024? That's what I thought it was November meeting. But Colin, the way you just set it back is different than the question. So the question was that the entire suitability rubric is not applicable. But my memory was what you were saying if there's a portion of it that was not applicable. Is that correct? I'm having a look at it. If you're referring to the OpenStax product from MR Cycle 2024, that was a full subject Algebra one product that was approved by this body. It was not required at that time that that product includes suitability excellence flags because
the rubric had not yet been revised. So at that point in time, which was November 2024, I believe, I'm thinking the the rubric was then updated in perhaps February, the January meeting following, but I'd I'd have to look at a timeline for sure. Right. Because we voted in November to exclude math supplemental from the suitability rubric, from going through the suitability process. And, my understanding from parents that have reached out to me is that, OpenStax has released a math suitability sup I mean, a math supplemental product that they have concerns about.
And, unfortunately, I can't help them because we don't we, relegated that authority to the TEA. So that's why I'm asking the chairman. At some point, can we have a vote to bring back math supplemental materials under the suitability rubric? I'm going to go I'm going to answer your question a little bit. Let me go look it up in the minutes and verify what happened so I can answer it factually before we leave this item. Let's see. I have Brooks, Belmetro, take Manelas. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, Mr. Dimcy and maybe their Chair can help with TDA.
So with given the new HB 100 and and and to be in all fairness, we did put items on the rejected list for last year's in recycle. I did hear, member Alice make mention of this. So is it my understanding that we will have an opportunity to go back and review that decision given the new information or the new mandate from h b one hundred? Because publishers were told you can, still have your products used because a lot of schools are still using products that
we have been using prior to HP 16 o five. So how do we correct that? If if the question is how do you remove a product from the rejected list, then the process is outlined in chapter 67 of administrative code, which would require the product to go back through the MRAA review, then be approved by this body or at the very least removed. So it can two stages. It can either be removed from the list and and live and no action, or, it can be removed from the list and then promoted to approved, but all of that is predicated on a rereview of the product.
Until that time, your this body is not able to take action on anything on the rejected list. So is that our ruling? Or is that from mandate? Like, because the board does have some Those are the boards approved your body's rules in chapter 67. So we can review that as a board given the new circumstances to see if we can make an exception for that, correct? That's certainly within the body's power, yes. Okay. And then my other questions, dealing with the timeline, I wanna go back to what was spoken of with, Mr. Lohman and,
with Lohman publishing this morning. So he he may mention that there was once a process where he was able to start the process but withdraw and was given six weeks. Is that can you speak to that? Is that something that we can revisit? That is included in the approved IMRA process, and was a warning that we gave any publisher that signed up last year and when in that December timeframe and said, there is a possibility that you yes, you can withdraw unless the board votes to require your product to be reviewed.
That happened in that case, so their their ability to withdraw no longer existed. And the timeline there was was accurate in the testimony that, that vote was taken in the the January 2025, and then we notified publishers in February 2025 of the requirement. So when you say the the board, we so they couldn't withdraw after beginning because the board decided that they could not? That's correct. There were 254 products out of the 304 that the board required to be reviewed this cycle.
Okay. Okay. Okay. So, next, the unique publishers. Did you talk about what a unique publisher is? Meaning, there are some publishers that submitted several products. And so, a unique publisher is one standalone publishing company. Okay. And, the reviewers' compensation, how is that released to our our reviewers? When do they get compensated? Can you kinda walk us through that process? Yes. Reviewers are paid via stipend. Those stipends are released in certain periods of the review after completed work. And so there was a stipend that was,
one, they were reimbursed for travel expenses to the kickoff at our May event and then received the stipend for completing that training in person. Mhmm. Their next round of stipends is coming after these preliminary reports, and then a final round right before the right at the term of their contract. So I believe it's three I'm gonna look at the people doing stipends. I believe it's three times that we break that stipend up after work has been completed. And the reason for that is that we we do have some attrition, right, during during the summer, and we don't wanna, you know, pay for work that hasn't yet been completed, but that's that's how it's set up.
So let me ask you this. So for the reviewers, after the compensation for the, the training, they receive no other compensation during the summer teachers. A lot of these are teachers. So they They receive it at the at the end of their work contract, which is clearly outlined in the contract that they signed. And when is the end of the work contract? November 30. So November 30 and Is their third payment. But they are receiving one, I believe, the the in a couple of weeks. Okay. October. Okay. Matt, and then my next question was, you have the appeal showcase.
This was new to me. This is something that the board was not aware of. This isn't a TEA decision here with the appeals. I mean, I like having an an appeals in a time line, but I also like being informed too. Were we informed? This is part of the RFIM that was published where we we published this timeline and and it was made after our I presented the after action report, where I shared that this was an express challenge from the publishers of this forty eight hour turnaround and, that they weren't able to make maybe strategic decisions about which appeals to make if
they didn't have all the information in hand. And so, this was a change in response to publisher feedback, that, you know, the part of the process is an appeals process, but you're correct that it's not solidified as much as other parts of the MR review. So I think we were trying to accommodate, this is still a new system, right, accommodate publishers, especially as we're adding supplemental products this round, and so we're we're you know, always improving. So if there's feedback from publishers which we've collected, and we'll analyze and come back to you for the after action report in January to share how we might shift it for mRecycle 2026.
Yeah. I I I like the process. I just like being informed. And then for alignment on on page 16, so I didn't realize that this is a such a a huge step. Can you give us some good examples of these, of the, cross alignment check? Can you just walk through, the the the You're referring to the slide. Oh, that's it. Yes. Yes. So so I was gonna close with it, but I I can I can jump into it? Yes, ma'am. I'm going to close with it. As long as you touch on it, I would love to know more about this. Happily. Thank you.
Colin, I'm pretty sure that you did brief that, that process, and it's been pretty transparent to the Board. So I appreciate that. We'll continue to go over it every meeting. Doctor. Balmetro? I just wanted to clarify a point. Member Pickering brought up the issue of saying the pledge of allegiance and then a prohibition against enforced speech. I wanted to clarify that because for some religious denominations, saying a pledge of allegiance to something other than their religious beliefs is forbidden.
And I'm assuming that that's part of the motivation behind prohibiting enforced speech. So I wanted to see if my understanding of that is correct. I can speak to the suitability rubric that this body approved. I'm not gonna venture to opine on constitutional law, but happy to forward that to our attorneys in the room. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Member Hickman. I just had a quick follow-up call on one of Member Pickering's questions. There were certain suitability flags and quality flags
in I think on our desk and then you said some of those would go away. What is the process for a flag going away before November? Yes, so the process is that for suitability and quality flags, we are sharing responses from the publishers back with reviewers and and asking them on suitability at least to say, do you agree or not agree, that that the publisher addressed the original issue. At the end of the day, those that they say no, there's still a problem or it's not fixed, we'll we'll leave, but it but it's not disqualifying.
Again, this this body decided as part of this process that a flag in in and of itself is not bad. It's it's merely a place to to pay attention, and that a material can be approved with flags, and that really looking at the publisher response I think is the best advice on which ones, to consider or not. Your question of, like, which ones go away would be the ones that disqualify a product from being reviewed as long as those are addressed. So like three queuing flags are ones where if they're not addressed appropriately or changed, then this body cannot in good conscience vote on a product that they know contains
three queuing for k3 foundational skills. Others will will note there, if the publisher addressed it or if they decided to say thanks but no thanks we don't agree, and we'll we'll leave that flag count down there at the bottom. So that's the appeals process we talked about earlier? Generally either the one I sent you is great, take another look, or here's a new one take a look at this one. Yes, and that's available now. So we just this is a snapshot in time from two weeks ago, where we wanted to bring you all our progress throughout the year so that you could get a starting point and have the next month and a half to express out loud today if there's anything that concerns you.
There's lots of publishers in the room and and others even more listening, so that they have the opportunity to make any updates or corrections between now and that final submission timeline ahead of the November meeting And you're here as the regulator, correct? Correct, yes sir. Okay, so if there's a Bluebonnet flag can you talk about the TEA process for how the Bluebonnet staff interact with the Bluebonnet regulator staff? Yes, as is all publishers if a publisher has an issue with one of their flags, they log into the dashboard and so I have colleagues at the agency that would
that are who are the publishers, and they are required to submit help desk tickets the same way as any other publisher. We keep a very strict division there, because we know that there's a higher level of scrutiny, and that all of these publishers should be treated fairly in this process, so, everyone's given the exact same opportunity to appeal decisions, to review flags, and ultimately these flags are coming from your appointed and selected reviewers. So, that's the other control here that we're ensuring that there's fairness across, across all products. Okay. The only concerning story I heard was when ISDs went to order materials there was
a period of time Bluebonnet was the only material they could order. Could you talk through that process? Yes. Statutorily open education resource products are not required to have a contract with the board and so they were ready so we put them online. Other publishers were required to sign a contract, that's the process that outlined earlier, and so they're the Open Education Resource products are exempted from that process in chapter 31. So is OpenStax in there as well? No. It's not it doesn't meet that definition of open education resource in chapter 31 as revised by House Bill sixteen oh five.
And next year are we gonna put open education resource first again and be the only one available for a period of time while the contracts are being executed? I'm hoping to get contracts executed faster but yes that'll be the order of operations. Whichever one is ready is going to be up first. Okay. Because and mainly because there's a time limit on the funding. There's there's a you use it or lose it time period for the open education resource materials of, if they the districts don't spend it by a certain point, then it lapses. So I think that's the other mitigating factor with with getting it online as fast
as possible. I thought it rolled to the next year. The $40 does, for for anything on the on the approved list, but the $20 does not. Okay. Thank you. One other thing, Member Hickman, from the first year is the contract had to be redone from the old proclamation contract. And so there's a little bit of a delay in that first year that I wouldn't anticipate we would have this year because the contract is already done. They just need to put the names in there and route the signatures. It's been much faster this time. Doctor. Ellis and then Charles. Okay. Let me see if I can walk through a few things with you.
Ms. Pickering talked about some flags that were on Bluebonnet. Was that that was on quality, right? Is that suitability flags? And you talked about how suitability of flags, we could pass material with flags without flags are more those are more qualitative as far as all that goes. 3Qing, does that fall under the suitability or the quality or is that more of a It's its own beast. Yes. But we can't by law approve any material that has three q in it. I'll have to check the technicality there. We should have to say we shouldn't. Yeah. You shouldn't. Yeah. We should have. It would be all advised to approve a product and then tell a district you're
not allowed to buy it or use it. I'm getting back to Ms. Pickering's comments about looking at what a reviewer said. So she also brought up HMH which had a flag for three queuing. So if we look at it, we would have to pass it if it had something with three queuing. Their response back was that three queuing is in the process of using context when you're decoding a word. Correct? So in their material, they had pictures after the decoding was done when they're learning context.
We used this years ago, the story of learning a word like seashells or sandcastles is going to mean something different to someone in Corpus Christi than it is someone in East Texas. So their point would be a student can decode the word sandcastles or seashells, but not know what that word means. So is it three queuing if they use a context of a picture after the student's been taught to decode that word, but to understand meaning? Is that three queuing? The so our we have a content team at the agency that that's their main
charge. And so that team along with us are gonna be reviewing all of those flags and measuring up against the definition of three queuing and statute and and then clearing that flag or not, and then and then handing it over to the body. The so I I was a math and science teacher in fourth grade, so I don't I don't have that committed to memory, but I I could get the phonics experts to help answer that for you. But your answer is there's still work to be done. Oh, yes, sir. The the the publisher could say, hey, fine. We'll take the pictures out, or the agency could come back and say, yes, that's not really Correct.
More information as far as that goes. Okay. The purpose of today is we're bringing up specific things. What is the ability for publishers to make changes from today moving forward through the process? Thank you for that question. We'll head to that slide. Today, publishers have the opportunity to respond to public testimony and anything they hear around this table. And that is due it's cut off by the teams. But it That that that was the intro. Yeah. October 13. Okay. Yeah. Following that submission timeline, we then go back to our review teams and say,
hey, we have new stuff or we have corrections, and review teams consider that information, check the new content for any new suitability flags or new factual error, and then and then we close the book on it. And so yeah. So So so if there's something we saw in quality or suitability that gets brought up today, they have a chance to respond. What about TEKS percentages, if that gets brought up today? TEKS percentages, in some cases, no. There are some publishers who did not meet the threshold to continue providing new content because it would have equated to submitting an entirely new product.
Did that change from this time to last time? I think it was 75%? Okay. So that stayed the time. That remained. Yes, sir. So if someone's above 75, let's say they're 98% Mhmm. Can they if it's brought up today, can they therefore submit or or show maybe not submit because I don't think they can add new material, but show where their 2% is. They've, so publishers, I believe, have three rounds of appeals with Tieks' Alignment. Yeah. So they have a new content appeal, and then they have a show cause hearing, which is where, we meet with the publisher. They present their evidence of why they believe their, documentation shows that they did indeed cover this new notification.
Day. There's they're ongoing. So some have and others are still in process. Okay. But I guess to clarify, if it's brought up, does someone say it 98%, it's brought up to date by what you said earlier, if it's brought up today, do they have a They haven't no, sir. Not not Unless they've unless, the results of their show cause hearing, we just haven't published yet. Right. So only if they're going through show cause? Correct. Okay. Third and last, HP 100, and I asked you some questions about that before. How is the agency contemplating working through the forty five day curing period? The answer there is that we're still contemplating.
I I need to, come back to this body either, as I'm working with the chair and and others of figuring out how we update the MRAA process to include that forty five day cure period. It's almost a a pre boarding list for the rejected list is how I've been thinking of it of, if the body says, yes, we plan to put something on a rejected list, then the publisher would have forty five days to cure it. I think questions questions that we still need to answer is what does curing mean? Is there an opportunity to cure based on TICS percentage? Is there an opportunity to cure on just quality or suitability?
And what are the parameters there? Because it it's quite broad in the bill. And so, yes, between now and January 2026, we'll have to figure that out and and update the process. Because bill's the bill. We can't Right. About what's in the bill, and I would contend that that the forty five day carrying period was important because of the what mister Hickman referred to as the high stakes. I think, obviously, as we're moving forward right now in IMEIRA '25, that that would apply. My concern is for IMEIRA '24 that didn't get the forty five day curing period. But again, the bill said it applies to to your your your point there,
2024. Can't go backwards. But moving forward and we don't have an action item today to place something on a potential rejected list. That is correct. This is just discussion. So your answer is there's still discussion that needs to happen on what publishers' ability to cure within that forty five, they would know is still ongoing. That is correct. Yes. Thank you. Okay. I wanna come back to member Pickering's question from earlier. So I'm reading from the suitability rubric itself. And if you remember, there's two sections in the suitability rubric.
One is Section one and that is the one that has the suitability prohibitions. Section two of that rubric is the suitability excellence requirements. So at the on page one of the suitability rubric, it says all full subject tier one, partial subject tier one and supplemental instructional materials as defined by Texas Education Code 31.002 for subjects defined in Texas Education Code 28.002A1 intended for kindergarten to grade 12 other than supplemental mathematics are required to include positive
evidence of compliance with category two, including subcategories 2.1, 2.11 of the rubric. So that is saying just the section two which is the positive, the excellent, let me make sure I got my terms here, the suitability excellence requirements do not apply to mathematics supplementals, not the entire suitability rubric. The rest of the suitability rubric does still apply to that. Then and that was amended, when we went back and pulled the minutes. This was from November's board meeting.
And the motion was to insert other than supplemental mathematics in that one section. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would still, I'm still going to stand on my initial request that at some point this body, goes back and takes that vote and that we include the full suitability rubric on math supplemental. Your request is noted. Thank you. Member Charles. I have a follow-up question to member Hickman. Can you get give us more clarity on how Bluebonnet goes to the process as compared to other publishers in the event that they have to appeal, they appeal to themselves? No.
They they so, I I manage a division at the agency, district operations technology and sustainability supports. The teams reporting to me are the teams that oversee the instruction materials technology fund and our storefront EMAT where where districts purchase those materials. The other team that reports to me is the the MR team, the team that's charged with with running this process. Separately, in another division is, our our open education resource development team, and they act as a publisher. And so they attend office hours just as any other publisher does.
They go through the appeals process. They are not allowed to be part of, the review just as other publishers are not allowed to be part of that review, so they're appealing to the process and we're following the rules that were established in chapter 67 for any publisher when it comes to Open Education Resources. There are distinctions for Open Education Resource instructional materials in chapter 31 that exempt it from rules around the contract, or distribution of instructional materials after they are approved by the SBOE. So there are some slight exceptions,
but that's where that's only coming from statute. That that's not something that we've invented, and, try and try and follow that ruling or rule rather. Are the persons that work on the OER team employees of the agency or they independent contractors? They're employees of the agency. They they also contract with third parties to produce other elements. So in the event that, I guess, persons on the OER team want to appeal, they appeal to your team? Correct. Through the proper recorded channels. We record all of our office hours. We we yeah. It's it's well documented.
Is there, like, a third party or some, I guess, independent party that would stand in the gap during that appeal to make sure that it's fair? Because it still seems like the agency is appealing to the agency. They they did not go through a show cause hearing because they they reached a 100%, but had they? Our show cause hearings are are attended by legal counsel, someone from our content team. We go to great lengths to ensure that our content team is split and that the same folks who are advising my side of the house are not the same ones advising our OER team. But, yes, there there's,
controls there in the rule tech so that that doesn't happen. Member of Ellis, good morning. Good morning. Microw phone, please. Is it not on? There you go. Is there an independent audit of the whole process once it's done to make sure that this process was followed properly. I understand that that the systems and the the the rules are in place and that they're they're being followed. But in order to give the constituents a peace of mind, is there an independent process after it's done to make sure it's in particular with
the state and with Bluebonnet that this process was followed faithfully and and thoroughly? Is there an independent audit of this whole system, basically? No. There would need to be a funding source for an independent audit, and and we'd have to find who we who we would name to do that. But currently, no. There's not. Thank you. Brooks in the paper. Thank you, mister chair. So, mister Dempsey, you're going to go through this process with us. Right? Because, again, the hearing is I I'm I would love for you to walk through the hearings part for me and the
cross alignment check. What how much, do you rate for this particular part, the final cross alignment check? If you could explain examples of that. And for the hearings, could publishers, request maybe an SVOE representative in those hearings? And what is the difference between the show cause? I could you just explain this part a little bit more? Yes. I'll I'll attack the first part of your question, which is around, the calibration. So, this year was our second year, and so we had some publishers that crossed,
two years of review. Either they had an English language version of the product in in 2024 and were submitting a Spanish language version this year. Perhaps they had an English product last year and a and a math product this year. Or even within the review, publishers had materials that cross several grade bands within a content area. And so the cross alignment is really our effort to take a hard look because different teams reviewed each product. And so we wanna ensure that the team reviewing fourth and fifth grade was not particularly harsh, when the product rated well kinder through third or product offering rather.
So, right, publishers don't typically break it up by grade level, but that's how we complete our review. And so, the cross alignment is is our way of, checking our work, going back, looking for any anomalies. If there's, wild swings in quality coverage, we we it raises the curiosity flag for us, and we go, I wonder, you know, last year, reviewers accepted most of this product's handwriting stuff. I'm wondering why the Spanish language product also wasn't accepted. What was the difference there? And so, we work with the reviewers to help understand. Sometimes we bring review teams together,
so that they can share what they found and and but at the end of the day, that rating is based on on the reviewers, and that's the the the sorry. The cross alignment process. And so we look intergenerationally, so MR cycle 24, '25, in the future, '26, to ensure that the list doesn't go stale, as things are approved and that that it it makes sense. Because, school districts are adopting typically a full grade run. They're not usually selecting a different fifth grade product from a fourth grade product from a third grade product. And so we wanna make sure that,
we we treated publishers fairly in that assessment and that because we have because of how operations work, that the split of a team doesn't lead to, a variance that would cause an end user not to adopt the material or not to purchase the material. So that that's what we're doing there. Does that answer the first part of your question? What do you do if it decreases? If their score decreases, what's the process for that? I think this would only be increasing or aligning. This would this would never be, like, demoting a product at this point. So maybe that decreases shipping?
Microphone, please. Unless there's new content submitted, which that's your, you know, you're opening the door as a publisher if you submit new content for your rating to go down. That's that's an exception there. Okay. Big guess and then the second. That makes perfect sense. I appreciate you explaining that. And then can you remind me the second part of your question? I need to remind myself. I need to remind myself. I do have to remind myself. The appeals process. Can an SVOE member attend an appeals process if the publishing company asks for that? Yes. We're happy to share those as meetings.
We would just need to post them well in advance if so that we didn't have a walk in quorum. But we're happy to do that. Member Pickering? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm going back and considering Member Hickman's question about the financing of it, reimbursements, what have you. And as I remember correctly, in House Bill sixteen oh five, it specifically says that a publisher shall, on the instructional materials, that they shall offer in the state of Texas a price that does not exceed the lowest price at which the publisher offers that instructional material for adoption or sale
to any state, any public school or any school district in The United States. And then on top of that, it requires the agency in House Bill sixteen oh five to create a dashboard that says the amount that the publisher is selling that material for in the state of Texas. So whenever you are procuring these reports for us, will you please put in there the price that they are selling that at the state of Texas? And then also when you do your research throughout the nation, what is the lowest price they're offering it for to any school district, any, state or any, camp or the three qualifiers in house bill six zero five.
What is the lowest price they're offering it in The United States compared to what it is in Texas? There's a there's a bit of a knowledge gap there for us, right? We're we're not gonna be able to to know where they sell it, but it is in their contract if they are approved. The most it's typically referred to as the most favored nations clause where, if you're selling it cheap for somewhere else, you got to sell it for the same price to our districts in Texas. And so part of the final report, so again these are preliminary, part of the final report will be, the publishers initial bids, which is typically the high watermark of the price they plan to charge for their
product if approved. The reason I say that is, let's say in the approval, they've been they get asked to add one more page, and that's gonna increase the cost of their material. We we can't quite lock them in, but we do ask them to give us their initial bids. They can always go down. Right? They can always adjust it down for for folks, but they are legally required when signing that contract to affirm that, they're following that most favored nations clause. Separately, there is a reporting requirement in house bill 16 o five that that we're working on with districts to help them, sorry, to,
help us get insight into where they're spending other dollars beyond the instruction materials technology allotment, because that that's a current blind spot. But, happy to we'll have the pricing, for you in November, and hopefully that will, help you make that decision. Yes. I think that will help our school districts a lot because even right now within the state, we're seeing we're seeing differences in what publishers are charging even from one district to another. So I think that this is really needed. And then also, if they violate the most favored nation clause, what happens then? I mean, what happens if we find out,
you know, that it's being donated to a school district somewhere and for free in America or if we find out that it's at a greatly reduced cost to another state, what happens then? That's outlined in the instruction materials contract. Specifically, I think the the instruction materials attachment c, which outlines the the special provisions related to instructional materials. I Okay. I can quote a lot of things, but not that by heart. And so I could get you a copy of that. And I believe there's remedies outlined in that contract. And then also in in rule text, I think in chapter 66,
there's the ability for this body to assess a fine. Okay. So whenever you, bring us these reports since you are required by law to have the price, the agencies required by law to display on on your website the price of the instructional materials. Can you please include that in our report? Yes, ma'am. It isn't and for publishers listening, your initial bid reports are due very soon, so that we can provide that information to, the members at their November meeting. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Mhmm. Member Charles. I have a question about the rubrics just going a little bit. Regarding supplemental maths and tier one math,
do you know the difference between the two rubrics? I see that there are more categories, obviously, but can you drill down the differences between My clicker has died on me. But yes, in general, the full subject material, went more the full subject rubric for mathematics k 12 went more in-depth with instructional material supports. For supplemental, we broadened that knowing that the landscape of supplemental product is quite vast, and we wanted a rubric that could meet the needs of all of those products without, you know, striking against one that that is good on its own,
but maybe, you know, collected with other, strong submittal products might not be the best. So, I would I would have to relook at those rubrics because I have the the ones from the next item in my head, but, I'm happy to show you the differences and why we made those choices. You have more slides? I just I wanna put a final point on this one, that, so members, you have the paper based version. A reminder that they are now live on swe.texas.gov/imra, where you should, as many members have already, drill down into those reports and understand why there is a count of flags. Publishers took time to respond to every single piece of feedback that came from MR
reviewers, from the public, from suitability reviewers, and they either responded with new content or suggestions or changes that they plan to make that could influence your vote. And so, if you have trouble accessing those reports, if you need support with that, we are here this week. You you know where to find me, and and we'll we'll gladly walk you through that. Ahead of the November meeting, we will send out recalibrated reports with updated information like pricing, that are required for us to bring to you, and then we'll have that final vote in November.
So thank you for your time this morning. Doctor. Ellis? So I do understand now this is a time, like you said earlier, that we can this is a time where we can bring up something that will allow a reviewer. Is this the approach? I've got two I'd like to bring up. Is this a time to do that or we're gonna have time to do that later? This is a fantastic time to do that. Okay. So to go on the record, McGraw Hill in seventh grade for ALEX, were flagged for suitability for using signed numbers. Signed number is a number that has a positive, negative, or neutral inside of it.
We talked about being Mitchum math person. So I'm in your wheelhouse now, right? Yes. Yes. So a sign number and they said that that was common core because that was used in common core but not Matiques. Sign number is in the dictionary and there's also other materials that were approved last time like bluebonnet that has a whole section on sign numbers. So that's one that I wanted to bring up. The other one was in ALEKS Grade eight. They used dilation, which they said is common core and not matiques. Dilation is a change in the size without altering its shape. But that's the same thing. That's a common term that's used in mathematics.
I don't think that refers that doesn't make it common core just because common core. Just as in the statute says, two plus two equals four. That's the exact example they use is in common core. So I want to make sure that we're not just because something is in common core doesn't make it common core. So there's those two and let me get to my other one. On Just Right Reader, I believe also this is probably similar to the one that I brought up with HMH on the 3Qing. So they had a flag on 3Qing that I think was probably pretty similar to
the other ones. I want to make sure I bring up the 3Qing flag on Just Write Reader as we're going on record here to that point. And is that in their Spanish or English product? I know it's in their English. Let me double check their Spanish to make sure. No. Just it's not Spanish. Just in English. And again, just to put a fine point on that, that's the same thing. That images there that we're using is a scaffold for vocabulary development, not for decoding. Decoding, right. So to your original question, is this the time, we've talked a lot for about the last hour and a half. But just to recap,
why we have this meeting in September and then a November vote is this is the meeting where if you have concerns and you want those addressed by on the record in public and addressed by the publisher, this is the time to do that so they can make corrections as appropriate. Doctor. Oz? One more while we're here. I know Lohman's testified earlier. There's a lot there. I don't have specific things for them, but I know that they were working on some things too. So I just want to put that on the record also. Member Hickman? But Chair, if it's for you or Member Ellis, if we don't bring something up today or maybe for Colin,
are you saying that only if we bring up specific publisher and a specific example do they have the opportunity to fix it or does everyone in the binder have the opportunity to fix it and put it in a give us a correction report with new material we could consider in November? Publishers are allowed to respond to things brought up during public testimony. So if it's general generic then yes, but what we're trying to avoid is the the complete like committee substitute if you will, next week where a publisher replaces their entire product, which would not be fair or true to the process.
So yes, if you have something that you'd want them to address, it may not change their quality score at the end of the day, but they can submit it if, you bring that up. Okay. Because I remember Bluebonnet last time, I was seeing corrections through the week. I assume we'll be doing the same thing as is our normal practice. We'll vote on Tuesday and then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday we'll be making changes and then we'll vote again on Friday. I think we are trying to avoid that scramble this year, so it would be ideal if pencils down, ahead of the November board meeting,
so that because the ability for us to get new content or get it approved or get it reviewed for suitability in a matter of forty eight hours is not possible. And so I think I'd like to move us towards, not allowing that the week of the board meeting, but it's, and we have kind of the pencils down in the the process document for two weeks before the start of the Board meeting. So that's what we're aiming to stick to with publishers this year, all publishers including Bluebonnet. Yes. I suggested we vote here at the September meeting, but we decided not to do that. So I'm not sure how we avoid voting on Tuesday and then changing our minds
and fixing things Wednesday, Thursday, but we'll see who puts their pencils down and who doesn't. That was the intent by this was to when we were designing the process, as you and I worked a lot on in public, to cut down some of the chaos in November. And I think you wanted a preliminary vote essentially here. And we as a Board decided not to do that, but this is like preliminary feedback to help make it a smoother November was kind of where the Board landed on that. No remainder. Collin,
just kind of curious about your October 13 deadline. That's a national holiday. That's Columbus Day. Is it normal to have a due date on a national holiday? We can look at that one for you. Just curious. No, it is not normal, but it's not an agency holiday, so that's why, but we can look at it, which is determined by the legislature, not us. Member Heckman? I guess what I'll do then is see if I can offer a general catchall is I would invite all the publishers who got suitability and quality flags and
problems to submit corrections, so that we can approve as many as possible and have better products to look at. So I don't know if that's what you're looking for but I would like all of the publishers to sharpen their pencils until the pens down day and give us improved materials to review for November. And many already have, so if you want to drill down into those reports you can see their responses already. Anybody else? Member Brooks. Thank you. Just really quick for staff that link is working today correct for because I've heard
feedback so it is working. It's operating. Thank you. Can you clarify which link? Oh, for all the materials on on the SVOE. The reports. Okay. It may be slow, but we'll yes. We'll go fly in the log address. Yeah. Okay, well that'll wrap up item number two. We have been going almost two hours, so it's a good break point. Time now is 10:51, let's come back at 11:04, sorry 11:06 and pick up with item number three, Sanitees. Report from the commissioner of education regarding instructional materials review and approval cycle 2024 confirmation
of changes. We do have one public testifier to start out. Umaira McFarling. The mill? I have handouts. She has handouts. Okay. I have 14, and then I have one. Yes. Maybe I can. This one for sure. Before you start my clock, I wanted to bring up that suitability table that showed zero common core flags. Microphone, please, ma'am. Oh. Before you start my clock, I just really wanted to ask about that suitability permit what's it called? The preliminary report for suitability that showed zero common core flags.
I'm confused because I submitted many, and I didn't remove them. But I don't know what that table was. So, Okay. Now I'm going to start. Oh, you start. Hello, honorable members. I worked for IMRa twenty twenty five, and I feel fortunate that I was hired as a parent among a room of 400 educators to review HMH. Teachers got the invite, but I didn't meet another non educator in three days. Perhaps TEA could collaborate with school districts to email IMRA invites to all parents. I'm sure more parents would sign up knowing they could earn thousands in supplemental income
and be part of this. After this experience reviewing HMH math and also HMH reading and then Pearson Sabbaths last year, we finally decided to remove our child from public school to private. It's already worth it in content alone. The classical curriculums in private schools are just higher quality. My hopes for 1605 will not benefit my kids in time. Its intent of the law is not being implemented all the way. All kids deserve better curriculum even if they can't afford it.
I know a lot of planning went to IMRA, but the process and excellence glides are flawed. There is a large focus on appeals and cleaning up flags. Some the same low quality digital curriculums causing low math and literate literacy rates are coming out to look great. Students will rarely have to read because HMH platforms reads it all to them. The amount of screen time, children will have will be detrimental to their brains, eyesight, and head rate. I believe if reviewers were first shown high quality classical curriculum as a benchmark, HMH content would not be approved.
It is low quality, many errors, common core math, three queuing, and it is biased. I have many examples, but please look at my handout to start. I don't want HMH near my children's minds. Please consider not approving, and I'm open to questions. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Member Hall. Thank you for being here today. And I appreciate you signing up to be a reviewer as a parent. I think that's huge. Thank you. Could you talk about some of the I I know you gave us a handout with some different things here from HMH, but can you talk about some of the specific flags? And then could you you said that they were removed or I don't know.
I I just talking about that, table that was put up, just it said is that for 2025? I just wanna clarify. We are we on is this a 2024 material? Or '25? Okay. I can speak to both, but, last year, I reviewed as a parent. This year, I reviewed as a a reviewer. And so, so your question about some examples of the flags that I put in for HMH. Common Core. You know, I took math in university, and I can tell you that this is aligned with Common Core standards more so
than TEKS. It conceptualizes math more so than it does math. There's low procedural, math in it. There's also dozens of references to, using social media for nine and ten year olds. I mean, it was shocking. It would say, social media is great. Get clicks and likes. Upload a photo. You're not allowed to sign up for a digital platform until you're 12 or 13. This was grade four and five math. So things like that, and then bias in it, you know, just showing Primary inquiry? Oh, sorry. What's your parliamentary,
Anthony? I'm are we talking on '24 or '25? Because I'm not I'm still not sure on that. Yes. With this agenda item, we just need to make sure that we're focused on things from 2024. Okay. So to to my point about 2024 is I saw products that were approved that really did not, represent the intent of 16 o five, which is high quality material. I looked at Savas k through five, and, I mean, it was low quality when you look next to a a classical curriculum. As a parent, this is why I'm I'm leaving public school because of digital platforms that are actually
not teaching the kids math and literacy. So that's where I'm at. So I'm kind of talking about both. Thank you. Further questions for the testifier for 2024. Thank you. I have a question again. So you said in 2024, you reviewed as a parent, but in 2025, you're an actual reviewer on a committee. And Mr. Chairman, again, we're only talking about 2024, correct? That's correct. So the the agenda item is for the confirmation of changes from 2024. Oh, I must have signed up for the wrong I'm sorry. I I must I I might I meant to sign up for
talk about my experience as a reviewer this year, but I'm I picked the wrong agenda item. Okay. I'm sorry. Well, as a parent, thank you for taking your own time in 2024 to review as a as a parent. I mean, that's the that's the bedrock of a great education is parent involvement according to Harvard. Thank you. With are there changes that you would recommend to us moving forward based on what you saw in 2024? Things that we should look for or things that we should tighten up. One of the things Parliament inquiry? It's your parliamentary inquiry. I want to make sure we stay on our agenda item.
Has I believe we're talking about HMH. Have they, submitted any confirmation of changes? Staff is telling me no. I don't think this is germane to the agenda item. This is not about IMR twenty twenty four. It's about confirmation of changes to IMR 24. I said that to the wrong Okay since the testifier signed up for the incorrect item this is for item number two if there's no objection we can go back take our testimony on two and come back to three is there objection? Okay so we'll go, we'll take our testimony on item number two we're back on two right now we
are posted for that today so we're good there And then we'll come back and pick up with item three, which we'll have no testimony for. Chair? You mean item one, the public hearing? Thank you. Item one. Thank you so much. I'm sorry. Questions for the testifier on item one, the public hearing. Member Pickering. I'm still back to my original question. Thank you, mister chairman. Okay. Is there anything that you would recommend to us moving forward on things that we should look at? Because, you know, again, I'm looking at suitability, report or a quality report that,
in my estimation, still has some very deep flaws in it. So since you were part of the process, is there anything that you would advise us moving forward on things that we should change or look at or tighten up? One thing I want to speak to the excellent flags. While the intent is good, when you see something American, you put in an excellence flag. Well, the rest of the course is talking about globalism, environmentalism, poverty in other parts of the world and has very little to do in America or especially in Texas. But it still ends up getting an excellent slide because,
oh, wow, you did a video in America. So it doesn't represent the whole context of the course. It might get an excellence flag because it's got this great American video, but the rest of the whole course is completely you know, global issues, political type issues like use windmills and oil, you know? So I don't think it represents the intent of 16.05. And as a parent, my hope when 16.05 passed was I could keep my kids in public school that I love,
and that it would eliminate ideologies out of education and provide parents and children with higher quality content. And that's not happening because I saw content last year that was approved that just simply is not high quality. It's a digital platform. It's glitchy. Kids are going to be on screens. They don't use their handwriting. There's just so many flaws with this process because and also there's lack of training on the law, right? There was more focus on sexual. I've been reviewing for five years. I've never seen obscene content in curriculum.
But at the training, that is kind of a top discussion. And then the rest are like, oh, yeah, but look at the rest of 22. I feel like there does need to be more training, to understand what is forced political activity. I don't want to see someone that I don't agree with on the cover of every unit of math for grade four, like Sandra Sotomayor, but no representation. I want to see maybe I like Clarence Thomas. I mean, I don't agree with that, and I can see it. And when I look at their public website, it's exactly what they promised to do.
They promised to teach certain ideologies in their curriculum, and it does come through. You know, it's subtle. They may have cleaned it up, but at the same time, it's there. And parents are sick of it. We're sick of it. We see it. And I don't want to go to private school. I don't want to drive my kid thirty minutes there, two hours a day driving, and thousands and thousands of dollars. But I'm not getting the curriculum that does my children justice and gives them the best choice, you know, best possibility in life.
So And miss McFarland, I noticed that also, when reviewing, the, the report that was sent to me last week, the kind of the exhaustive report of flags, whatever. I noticed that that that the spirit of sixteen o five is that we want, the patriotic. Right? We want the Informed America Patriotism Act enforced in in instructional materials, which is what it's intended for for school districts and this body. But yet in my in my flags, I'm saying that, oh, they had a picture of an American flag in the corner, so check. That's right. That's what I'm trying to say. You're getting excellent flags because, like,
oh, yay, you did an American thing. You had an American picture. You mentioned America. Oh, you get an excellent flag. Yeah. 90% of the course is talking about poverty in a foreign nation, nations that we know that they're just too early to even learn about this stuff. It's just more foreign based, more globalist based, you know, just knocking oil production. And I just I don't agree with it. It goes against my values as a parent. And I see it as subtle propaganda, and I'm tired of it, you know? Right.
Right. I agree with you because I noticed that also in a particular lesson, it had a picture of an oil derrick, which was like they considered pro oil, but then the lesson was very much against oil and gas. So If you see my handout that I didn't reproduce, that is actually from HMH grade three to five. Just look at the stories. I don't want my kids reading this ridiculous stuff. And I think a lot of parents in Texas would agree with me. Like, I didn't make copies of that, but I submitted the, the reading packet from HMH three to five. It's just it's ridiculous.
It has nothing to do with America. It has nothing to do with American civics. It has nothing to do with American history. And I think I find it absurd, and I can't wait to get my daughter out of public school next year because all the private schools were full this year. They wouldn't even take a waiting list. And I'm telling you, this is why. When you have HMH using this as reading material, do not give this to my child. You're violating my parental rights. When you give my child like, I just Do we have a copy of that? That I know.
Can you email that to us, please? And again, you're targeting or you're talking the most about HMH because as a reviewer, that's what you were hired to review. Right? This year, and I did math, supplemental math, but then on my own, I did a review of reading three to five, grades three to five, HMH. Last year, did, Pearson Savas, k through five and Bluebonnet I don't know. It was called something else back then K through five and, you know, compared them side by side. And I'm sorry. Classical curriculum, standard algorithm It doesn't take a genius to realize that these digital platforms where kids
can just click through, click a speaker, have the lesson read to them I mean, how is that allowed in every course? HMH for reading, supplemental math? They click a speaker. It reads it to them. It is detrimental to literacy. I just don't want my children to have this stuff. I think everyone here knows how much I love data. Will you please send me all of that? All your side by sides, everything that you reviewed as a parent and as a reviewer, will you please send it to me? Sure. To me. Yes. Thank you.
Appreciate it. Member Brooks. Oh, I just wanted to thank you. It's nice to hear from parents. I welcome parents coming and and talking to us so, we can hear that perspective. So thank you for, coming today as well. Thank you. I tried to get other parents to come, but driving two hours plus for two minutes well, I appreciate the chance to talk now, actually, so thank you. Just nobody could come. And I had to get my husband to take care of the kids today. So it is tough to get people to come, but the sentiment of parents is let's clean this up.
We all want better curriculums for our kids. Doctor. Palmetra? I would just like to thank you for coming. I have two questions for you. If your child were blind, would you feel the same way about having something that was read to your student? But this material is not for blind students. It is available in the general foundational subject of English three through five. Absolutely. You have to have accommodations, but this is built into the student digital platform. This is not for special ed. This is not for disabled I mean,
so I understand your point, but we are reviewing a foundational subject that has the speaker. And kids can literally click through these digital platforms like a game until they get the right answer, and they never have to do math. They never have to read. And I find it silly. I'd also like to ask you, what were your comments about the way that you were saying there's something about oil rigor. I'm not sure. I'm not familiar with that particular I have a handout and then maybe, it there's only one copy, but you could pass it to each other.
These were, stories taken directly from the HMH curriculum submission for grades three to five, and I printed some of the stories. And as a parent, I'm just like, keep your subversive ideologies to yourselves. I don't agree with what you're teaching and it's false, false information. You mean that you do not believe that we're experiencing global warming? Absolutely not. We are in a cyclical cycle that has been happening since the dawn of time. I do not believe that. You might believe that, but I don't feel like this,
you know, unproven theory should be injected onto children's minds. So Do you believe in heat trapping gases? I believe that carbon dioxide is the foundation of life. And I think that, this whole farce is not what I believe in. And I don't want it imposed on my children because it's not a fact. It's a thing. What's your point of order? Never figure on what's your point of order. I think we maybe now were arguing, beliefs in science theories. I think we may be outside the scope, but it shouldn't be in the curriculum. Do you have anything further,
Doctor. Belmonroe? No, thank you. Doctor. Ellis? Thank you for being here. To clarify, were you with English or math? I was officially with supplemental math, grade four and five, HMH. And then on my own, I did reading three to five. Okay. So I want to make sure I'm looking at the right one. You said supplemental math four and five. Yes. Let me go to that one. And you were suitability, not quite Correct. Okay. So you raised flags. I see they did have suitability flags. Fill me in on the process of a reviewer.
Once you flag something and the publisher comes back with a response, are you part of that review on their response? Or is that all the No. I mean, yeah. They do come back. So the SAFL partners, the, third party contractor, will come back and show me all of the responses from the publishers. And basically, we were trained that if I'm trying to recall the training for appeals. But basically, if the publisher addressed the issue and answered your question, you're supposed to remove the flag. And I said,
no, I don't want to remove my flags because it egregiously changes the content submitted. There were so many flags and so many changes that I said, no, the original submission is so altered as such that I will not remove the flags because I cannot see the new content that they submit. I know they were making some changes because when I tried to go back in, there were changes to like a page 59. So I asked that they not touch my flags or remove my flags at all
because the content submitted would have been so altered from the original that I didn't agree. So that's why I was bringing up that table that showed zero. I don't know what that table was. Preliminary report of suitability flags that showed zero. I have several flags that shouldn't be zero, but I don't I don't know if I'm interpreting that table. Your testimonies, you are told that if they just responded with anything, you were supposed to accept it? It's okay. I'm trying to think of what Thurman said in the in the video training,
but basically that and what we actually took a we actually took a response questionnaire that if if they responded here it is that we would agree to remove the flag if they responded and address the flag, Right? And I was like, no, I'm not gonna remove I'm not removing my flags because there were so many changes required. The whole course, it was like social media, social media, social media. It was ridiculous for math, for grade nine. So this is a questionnaire. Suitability, appeals, training,
post assessment. Publisher must accept or reject. Like, it just had questions where we were supposed to remove the flag. So then I got followed up by the manager at SACL and then the manager's manager at SACL just asking me, hey, are you sure, you know, that you saw all the changes? Are you sure you don't want to change your flag? Are you sure you don't want to accept? I said, no, I don't want to remove my flags. I'm keeping them. Okay. So I'm trying to hear I think you're saying there were so many that you
didn't want to because you felt there were a lot. Yes. So let's just make a number up. Let's say there were 50. I'm just going to just 27. Okay. 27. So to your point was that that was too many. Let's just say they addressed 10 of those and fixed them to the satisfaction you were unwilling to move even those 10 because there was too many to start with? Thank you for asking that question. So for example, one of the changes would be to remove 10 pages from each unit in each
grade. We're talking about removing 60 pages from the content, and I thought, well, if you're removing that much content because of my flag, I'm not going to remove the flag because you've altered the course. You've altered the that that they removed the first two weeks of curriculum for math 180 in grade four and five because of my flags. I'm like, well, what are you replacing it with? Oh, they don't have to replace it. So I'm not removing my flags because you altered the course. What are you going to do in the first two weeks if you removed the
first two weeks? So And I think this is a question for staff later. But the point would be, I think maybe what you're making, let's say, a certain X number of percentage of the TEKS were on those 10 pages, then they might not meet the TEKS. But I think the answer is they still have to if they remove something, they still have to meet us. But I just wanna be clear. A couple of things that were interesting to me. You were told that you should remove the flag just as long as they addressed them, but also that you did not wanna move any of them even if they were addressed because there was too many? I I did accept a couple small ones.
I didn't I shouldn't have said all. But there was only maybe three that I accepted because it was such a minor change. The rest were such a huge change to the content. And we're not allowed to see the changes. So how can I approve like, how can I remove my flag when I don't get to see what you replaced it with? You know, I might get a paragraph that says, we will do this and this, But now I can't go back to the content and actually see what a child will see if this is approved. Member Childs. Thank you for coming. Thank you.
Can you clarify again what did you actually review? What was your? Okay. So math one eight HMH, math one eighty, grade four and five. Okay. Thank you for doing that. Thank you. Can you give us a just a brief description of how you were trained to handle yourself when you get flags? Yeah. I'm just a little bit confused on, like, how the agency trains you to handle flags. Once you flag something, the publisher changes it or fixes it. What are you supposed to do next according to the training that you Okay. Perfect. So,
yes, we did have training last month that talked about how the appeals will work. And then we do this questionnaire that we agree with the training and how we handle flags. When we submit a flag, it goes to the publisher, the publisher will respond and either reject or accept your flag. And usually, they would accept and then there would be like a cut and paste response that was repeated several times like, you know, we have reviewed the content and there is no common core so this is resolved.
Okay. I'm like, no. Do they have to show like screen shots of how they changed it? No. No. You all you get is I see the people behind you saying yes. No. You just you don't. They don't make the new they don't make the new content. They just give you the transcript of what they're going to do, right? They you don't get to go back in and see how from what I understand, they're not supposed to be changing the submission. So and I have lost access. I've asked now for the last three weeks to get access back into I can't even get back into the products for weeks now and no one has come back
to me to say so we cannot see new changes. We just get, we get a paragraph of this is what well, I have them well, these are my we this is what we're going to do. But you don't get to look you don't get to log in and actually see the change. Okay. I was just trying to get clear on if this is an issue in our process, or are you as an individual reviewer saying, I'm going to circumvent the process. And because of my beliefs, I'm going to do it differently. I'm just trying to get clear on that. Well, I mean, I've read 16 o five and I've understood the process.
And I would say if someone I don't know where that rule is coming from. If I'm being trained saying that if the publisher addresses your concern and makes a change, that you have to accept it. Well, I'm asking if you get to see it. Well, I only and all we get to see as reviewers is the paragraph of what they will do. So let's say there's a movie, you know, fall fall Yeah. They'll just give you you don't actually get to see how the content will look
once it's changed. And there's so many That's true. That might be an issue. I would agree. Yeah. That's true. That's what I've been asking. And clarity on that. If you I would love clarity because I've been asking for weeks, like, I want to see how the content will look after the changes are made to a child. Now the response that I got is that they're not the publisher will not invest the money to make those changes because why would they invest money if they don't know their product is going to be approved? So it's kind of a chicken and egg scenario. That's what Thurman told me from SaaPle Partners, how they don't want to make the new videos and create the new content because
that would cost a lot of money, Okay? And then why would they do that if they don't even know that they're going to get approved for IMRA? So I'm like, but how do I know what they're actually going to do? Who's going to follow-up and check that they did what they said they were going to do? Sure. Last question. You gave out a power point about teaching social and racial justice in the classroom and you were I don't know if you were talking about this being silly and false. Well so I need some clarity on that because you told me that you were reviewing math. Oh, well,
so But you gave out a PowerPoint that doesn't relate to math, and then you use words like silly and false. I'm talking What I'm reading on this document isn't I want you to see, does anybody have my handout with the reading, the big one? The I gave it to a gentleman with all the reading material. No? Who had the stack of reading? And I had only I had only one copy and I I handed it to the man. That's what I was talking about silly. Oh, he's making copies. I was referring to the silly stories. Okay. Okay. But I will speak to this as a mom.
Are you speaking to this in your individual capacity as a parent or as a math reviewer? No, no, no. In my individual capacity as a mom. When if they tell you what they're going to do if they tell you they're going to teach racial justice in the classroom, that is a violation of my parental rights. This is not this is not the government's job to teach my children these topics. My children are very well diversified in our community. We live in the most diverse,
beautifully diverse zip code. Do not teach my children about racism in school. Do not teach my children about these DEI and all. I I don't want it. I want reading, writing, arithmetic, history, science, all of it. You don't want history though. I just heard you say you do want history. I'm just trying to get clear. I'm not Of course I do. I just I'm saying parents are sick of this. This is a violation of my rights. When a company tells you, when HMH says right on their public website that they will teach Rachel justice in
the classroom, I as a mother said, no, you will not. You will not teach my child these things. My children are happy. They have friends from every, every culture and you will not teach them this in the classroom without my consent. That's what parents are saying. Stop it. And this is right this is right on their I mean, I'm not arguing with your purpose. You didn't necessarily review this. Because I just I just thought you were talking about. This is their public website. This is not a curriculum. This is their public website. This wasn't submitted through our Immer process.
No. This is just something that you found on your own as a parent to couple with your testimony as a math reviewer? Well, I've been reviewing curriculum for five years for for the district, last year, as a parent. And now this year, thankfully, just to see the whole process. And I would tell you, I am shocked that a company like this could even be up for review in Texas because as far as I as far as I know, CRT and DEI is illegal in K through K through 12 schools. But when you use the word silly and false,
you were talking about the math stories that we haven't looked at yet. No. We weren't talking about this actual thing that happened in 2020 being silly and false. What's what's in 2020? What's on the document that you gave us? I'm just saying that they're saying they're gonna teach my children social and racial justice in the classroom, and I'm saying no. You're not. Okay. No, you are not. That's my right as a parent to teach my children those topics, not the government. Okay. But but the reason I think both of your points have been well made. Okay. And I respect your Member Maynard and then Member Hall.
There's a lot going on here. Yes. And so let me see if I can get a little bit of clarity. So did you find concerning content in the supplemental math? Yes. Okay. Absolutely. Okay. A lot. Okay. And then so then you also then you went over in what you found and what I'm hearing is that and tell me if this is what you're saying is that what you found in the reading is consistent with what you found in the math. Yes. So there seems to be sort of a recurring thing. Okay.
That's and just a question for staff. Are all the things that are being reviewed right now are they available to the public? Can the public see them? Yes. All the materials for the IMRA review cycle are available online, have been available since early May on the SPOE website. Okay. Thank you. And then who when you say that, in the process, who is your point of contact? SSAFL Partners. So TEA pays us for training and conducts the initial training at the Marriott. It was fantastic, three days at the Marriott with the lazy river.
And it was wonderful. Kids enjoyed it. Lots of families there. And then after that, SSAFL part well, SSAFL was there. But SSAFL is the third party contractor that basically handles all the flags, all the appeals. They're the middleman between TEA and the reviewers. Okay. Tell me about your experience with them. I mean, honestly, if I was just going to speak from the cuff, it just felt like there was a strong push to clean up the flags, to sanitize the flags. And I'm like, I'm not removing it when you've changed the content so much.
I mean, if you're a company that has such bad judgment that you're going to put, like, endless videos and assignments praising social media to nine year olds, you're not a good curriculum company. I'm sorry. I mean, I'm a mom speaking as a mom there. Don't show that to my kids. So they, they really did push for there was more focus on the appeals and cleanup than there was on the review. I will say that for sure. So you you did you do you feel like that maybe that you were being pressured to to to have a certain outcome?
Absolutely. There is definitely much more emphasis on the appeals and cleanup of the flags than there is on the flags themselves. Yeah. Okay. So we want to get rid of the flags but not necessarily address the reason for the flags? Yeah. I mean, there was a lot of cleanup. I wish that there would have been a little bit more emphasis on going through chapter 22. Right? And I might be a little more privy to it because I've read it before. But people there, teachers there, they've never read chapter 22. A lot of them, I asked. I was there. I talked to a lot of people. I feel like there needs to be you know,
we're not finding obscene content in curriculums, but we are finding ideologies, bias, forced political activity. We're finding common core. We're finding three Qs. So I feel like there needed to be just a little bit more emphasis on going over the law and describing that to reviewers and then a little more guidance up until you know, throughout that flagging process. Like, we had weekly meetings, but it really didn't talk about the law the law, the intent. What is the intent of HB sixteen oh five other than obscene content?
You know, that the focus was on obscene. I've never seen obscene in curriculum. I've seen it in books, not curriculum. So yeah, there needs to be a little more focus on the front end and less focus on the appeals and flight cleanup. All right. Thank you. Member Hall. Ma'am, thank you so much for again, for being here. And I agree with everything that you said. I wish I could clap. I almost gave you jazz hands a few times. But as a mom, I think you represent a lot more people than just yourself. I think you represent a lot of moms around the state who have lost trust in our public education system because of some of these concerns that you've raised.
And so I think it's, the entire board should take what you're saying seriously because we need to restore that trust. And from your perspective, both as a mom and as a reviewer, what could we do as a state board of education, looking at the process to help restore that trust and just how things are reviewed and addressing those flags? Are there a couple specific things briefly you can give us? I know that there's so many products to review, but there was definitely a lack of parental involvement. I had not met another non educator the whole time I was there, other than one school board member.
Also, I mean, they're already in but I met nobody that was outside of education, and I think that's a problem. I think that teachers are already looking at these curriculums and they might think they're fine because that's what they're used to teaching in public ed, but we're going for a higher standard. We're going for a golden standard here with 16.05. We're not just here to re to approve stuff that we're already using in Texas that is causing low math and literacy rates. And I can tell you, this math that I looked at would not teach a child math at all.
I can say that with full confidence. So there needs to be more parents. I don't know where TEA is advertising to parents. Like, nobody that I know, knows about this. So I don't know how the advertisement would be reaching parents and not just educators. Clearly, the teachers got the invite, right? I mean, the whole room was teachers and they were great. I worked with some amazing ladies. But I just think that that perspective, if parents knew that they could make thousands of dollars and participate and we got
that community engagement out, that would be important. And then also training on the law and the true intent of HB6 that was not conveyed. The true intent from a mom's perspective is high quality instructional material, not the same old, same old that's been in public school that is driving moms crazy with the digital clicking they look like video games and kindergarten content for grade five. It's mediocre. And it's past. You know, it's getting past through this process.
So I mean, it's not the gold standard. So I would say the excellence flags are a huge problem. Makes it look good just because you put a flag on there or you put a video. But then 90% of the content is talking about poverty and environmental globalism and all the UN ESG stuff that I I'm just done with it. I just want my kids to learn American civics, real history, not ideologies, reading, writing, arithmetic. Just stop with all the
stuff. Like, we're done. It's very frustrating. And this process is letting it slip through. I can see that from last year. And now this, whatever that table was about the flags, it's showing zero. I don't know what I was looking at there with the initial flag table that said zero common core. Did you do you know what I'm talking about? It's I mean, that to me is incorrect. How so it was the table called preliminary reports suitability breakdown, and it showed like 77 excellence flags and then it showed zero common core and it said that
this is the count of flags are shown for both IMRa reviewers and public feedback. And it said zero for Common Core. It just had a bunch of it had, do you know where that data is coming from? Because I have common core flags that I didn't remove. So that should not be zero. Mr. Chairman, is this something Colin could answer for us? Yeah. I intend to go back to well, we're on back on item number one right now. Let me go to item number two next so Colin can, address any concerns. Can you hold your questions till we conclude the public testimony portion,
please? Doctor Clark? Thank you. Thank you for being here. Can you speak to actually where the flags are in the curriculum that you spoke? Like, where do we start? Okay. So, I actually brought all my flags. They're throughout. So for example, I'll give you an example. The opening intro video to every unit was a video praising social media. Like social media is a great tool I mean, and please imagine this is to nine year olds. Social media is a great tool for businesses and for kids to upload your photos
and click and like. And I'm like, don't teach my kids that social media is good. Do you have any idea how much we fight screen time? So that's just an example. That's the opening. And then you get into the first two weeks of HMH Math 80, Math 180, and it is, you know, again, subversive political, which goes along with their public statements. You've got Sandra Sodermaier, Lebron James, which is great, popular, but these are activists that go against my political views and there's no representation from
any kind of a conservative figure. So it becomes very obvious when it's repeated eight times. Like, I think I saw Sandra Sodermaier eight or 16 times in math for nine year olds, you know? And it would be one thing if they didn't espouse their actual values and ideologies right in public telling us exactly what they're going to do. And they're doing it. And it's passing the flags. Not my flags, but it's passing some flags. I had a team that flagged as well. But just don't keep your your bias out of my kids' curriculum.
That's it. Thank you. So, also, you spoke about you don't want the government teaching social activism, things like that. So are you okay with the government teaching religion? They're not supposed to proselytize. Right? There's okay. So we have In God We Trust at the at the entrance of every school. We have In God We Trust on all of our money. We heard from the constitutional lawyer for the attorney general's office last year who spoke to the myth of separation versus separation of church and state.
We know that schools can't proselytize in the content, but please show me where you have found content that proselytizes. You know, just simply erasing the Bible is erasing history. So I understand the outrage and I understand there was a lot of nonprofits that spoke out against it. But show me where it's wrong to teach kindergarten kids about the golden rule and then have a table of five other cultures and religions and how they interpret the golden rule and tell me where the outrage is,
like, we can't even mention God? Well, give me your money. So when we speak about history, do you think it's wrong to speak about the story of Emmett Till? No. I don't know that story. Is germane to the posting? It is. Is there a specific instructional material? Yes. Because she referenced the instructional material that she brought in. I'll let you keep going. Please be brief. I think That's my last question. I'm sorry. The story of I'm I'm not a theologist. I don't I'm not aware of that story. But I'm So it's history that obviously should be taught then.
Thank you. If it's history, teach it, absolutely. Member Little? Mr. Chair, I move that we move to the next item, please. Motion and second. Is there any objection to moving to item number two on the agenda? I just have one more question because I'm a little bit confused. We have one objection. Okay. We'll take a voice vote here on whether to move forward. All those in favor of moving forward to item number two, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed, no. No. The ayes have it. We'll move to agenda item number two. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for the patience as we work through that.
Colin, we're going to go to item number two now, so you can address some of the procedural concerns that came up during that discussion, and then we'll go to item number three. Thank you, Chair. Hello again, Board. Like to provide some context from that testimony. I think the first is, I think I heard that there might be flags missing. I believe the testifier was referring to a screen grab on my presentation, which is meant to be an illustrative example and not the full report. The full report for all products can be found online or in your binders,
for the products, including the ones that she reviewed. Additionally, there was a statement that flags were missing. All 27 of the suitability flags submitted by that particular reviewer are available in the reports, alongside the publisher's response to those flags. So there isn't data missing. It's included inside of these reports. That's why we bring it to this point and allow publishers to respond to it. And then I want to get to the process of appeals. I think one thing that this Immera process
on which it is predicated is the belief that this process should fortify materials at the end, right? This is not, just a test but rather a way for us all to get to better materials by the end of the review. To that end, you would see opportunities for appeal, opportunities for publishers to submit new content because all of our goals combined is to get the highest quality materials, as many as possible, as many options as possible for local school districts at the end of this process and to do that we need to give publishers the opportunity to submit new content
which reviewers do have access to as part of our recalibration. We haven't gotten to that point yet in the time period, but it is part of our process. And I think it speaks to our commitment at the agency and for the board to get to these high quality materials. If we let them be static, if this was a check process, we wouldn't have an appeals window. We would merely do the review and then say yes or no. And so I think, if there's a concern about publishers submitting new content, that's not a bug. It's a feature.
It's meant to give publishers the opportunity to improve their products throughout the review. And then I think the final thing I mentioned earlier on during my presentation the, ability to perhaps clear flags by the November vote. And so I think the testifier was referring to the process where publishers have responded, and we were asking all reviewers of suitability, hey, do you think that this publisher's response addressed your issue? Yes or no? If they want to leave it no, fine, it's going to remain on that final report and then it would be up to
the member to decide if that's still something that carries weight for them maybe, maybe not but we were aiming to address as many as possible before this preliminary report, so that we could be well on our way to final reports by November. So I think, I I certainly trust the the testifier's testimony, right, that it felt pressured. That that wasn't our intent. It may have been our our urgency, interpreted that way. But I I do want to say that the all of the flags for that reviewer are in the report. You can click through and drill down to them.
The publisher's response is there as well. And I think valid flags, right? Again, it's not our job at staff side to put our thumb on the scale, but rather to report the flags that came out of this review. So I just wanted to clarify those points, but happy to take questions about the process or other concerns. Maynard, Hall, Ellis, Hickram. Collin, the external contractor that's managing the process. And so we have a staff here in the agency and then we've outsourced Microsoft please, Mayor. We've outsourced a lot of that to an external contractors that is that accurate?
There are five staff members at the agency charged with running this review behind me and myself and then yes we do employ a third party contractor to help us execute the review. Okay and what is the name of that contractor? Cefal Partners. Cefal? Cefal, S a f a l. Cefal, okay and tell me about them. They are a contractor who has been with us as part of the TEEX resource review, which our Texas resource review process. They were our contracted vendor when House Bill 65 was passed.
They are at the term of their contract. We are now advertising for a replacement of this contract. But as part of this MRR process, we require more folks to review all these materials and they're they've been our partner to help us execute this review. Okay. And so who do they report to? Ultimately me. Okay. And so tell me a little bit about the oversight process a little bit. How do you and how is that oversight exercised? So we have a common work plan that's outlined from our contract and then divide
up the work from there. We hold weekly check-in meetings to check on progress as we near major milestones like our kickoff event or like the release of these reports for meeting much more frequently, usually daily, to align with the process documents and prepping for these meetings, and we also host alongside them weekly office hours for publishers and updates for publishers. They are are managers of managers, right? There's layers of folks who are helping these review teams meet weekly,
so that we keep in tight coordination there and then also have regular cadence of check ins throughout the review. And just how do we make sure that our external contractor and everybody who is working in that process is aligned with us just in terms of what the mission is and what our values are, the values of the process, how do we ensure that we have alignment on that? We set that out with training between my team and the vendor. We do the same for our vendor that helps us design and build this website
where we're all getting on the same page of our shared commitment to the instructional materials review. Practically speaking, we have guidance documents that outline our major goals for the next two, five, ten years as an example. And it may not always be with that vendor, but as an agency, we're trying to align our work plan, with the long term goals of TEKS revisions and other things at the agency. So each year, we kick off an MRSA cycle with going over that shared understanding and commitment. And then we not only trust,
we verify. We go to those trainings of other sub managers. We approve any document that's going to be public facing or used with our reviewers beforehand. So there's controls there and the way for our team to help manage through lots of layers to get this complicated process executed. All right, thank you. Member Hall? Colin, can you speak to just the concern that was raised by our testifier when something's put back up for goes back to the publisher and then they say
okay these are the changes that are made and and they get like a paragraph on that, that's all that you're requiring from them as well, right? It's just that paragraph before it comes to us in in November or do you actually see the change that's made? There when publishers submit new content in response, they can give us a summary if it is a quick change like I'm going to put this period at the end of the sentence However, they are doing something like reproducing an entire video or they're swapping out entire modules of a lesson, we do require by the time of the vote, that publishers tell us what they're going to do so that you all have that
information. Our next item is confirmation of changes. And that is the formal process where we go back and check and make sure that your vote from last November, all of those changes were actually made. They're live in the materials. So the process has that built in for us to check it. If there is a suggested change from a publisher that you see or during your review in the next month where you're like, I need more clarity on that, let us know, and we can go get that from the publisher if it's not sufficient or if it's vague. But yes we're at the process now where a publisher maybe gave a starting response
of okay we'll either remove that video or change the introduction in that video and then our team follows up and says well we need the transcript of that video or we need the images, so that's next in the process as we recalibrate reports. Doctor. Ellis. So I think the testifier was alluding that they don't see that. Do they see the changes? Everyone's able to see the changes on the online reports so if you if you click through, the particular product that was mentioned click through click on the flag see the publisher response if they're submitting new content there's a link that says link to new content
Sometimes the publisher submits it as a publisher submitted initiated change, and it's not hand in hand with the flag, but it is viewable by the public. And I think that's I'm going to take that feedback on helping train our reviewers to find that more easily as certainly a point of issue. And our training overall is our first year doing suitability only training. But yes, it's available for folks. The other concern she brought up was for example, I think she used an example where they took out like 10 pages and she wasn't sure what that did to the rest of the material. If changes made by the publisher that would affect let's say their teach percentages or
would for example affect where they met criteria on the quality rubric do you look at that? Yes and it's part of the reason why we we made a unified appeals process this year. We know that if you touch one thing you might impact the five other facets of the instructional materials review. So each change goes back through a mini cycle of review. We go back and check that change. Did it impact coverage of the essential knowledge and skills? Did it impact the ELFs? Did it impact quality? Is there a new suitability flag that came from this? And that's why we have to have that pencils downtime because we need that time
to recalibrate and reassess the reports. But we do check for that. And so a publisher can't remove an entire section if that section was designed to cover a breakout of a TIC. They need to give us a different solution and new content in order to maintain it or to address the concern. Thank you. Member Pickering? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, Colin, I'm looking at the report again. You gave me a pretty comprehensive report after I asked for it last week of of, the flags and what have you. And the vast majority of publisher responses of I mean,
overwhelming majority. Okay? Responses of, we will add, we will correct, we will update. Right? It's all future looking. It's so it's not there's not a fix in here. The publisher's response is we will take action at some point. Yeah. But so I think what's happening is maybe this is a Safal problem. I don't know if this is a TA problem or Safal problem. But what's happening is I think according to, miss McFarland's testimony is that she was pressured to remove her flags based off of this response. The publishers are,
response of we will take further action. And what she's saying is she doesn't wanna remove if I'm understanding correctly, she did not wanna remove her flag until she's verified that the flag correction has happened. Yes, ma'am. So I, I'll own that failure in communication. So, a publisher can make that comment there and then what they're required to do is go and submit what's called a publisher initiated change, and that's listed at the bottom of the digital report where you can see all those changes. And so sound from and I we need to investigate. But it sounds to me that that connection wasn't made,
which is a a failure on my part to make sure that that got to reviewers, that they understand that, yes, the publisher is saying accept. We're gonna plan to do this, and then they submit the change so that you have that detail, which is difficult. I agree. I wouldn't want to remove a flag or say that it had been handled if I didn't see the detail that was that I needed, so I will go address that, but I I will say the the data is there, it just maybe isn't I know it's not in the report I sent you because it would be another call. Even have it. How can I expect how can I expect a reviewer to have the information to
verify when I was in the face we own them or I don't even have it? It's on the online report so that we can drill down. And I'm I'm happy to do some orientation for that again just to make sure that people can find it correctly. So that's, you know, a failure in me drawing a good map, to get people to the right data, but the data is there. Okay. So you're saying that every every flag that has been flagged, there is already a fix that has happened that we can review that fix? If the publisher has submitted it. I'm sorry? If the publisher responded, yes. Okay. Well, I think that we had testimony right before you that a reviewer was being pressured
to remove her flags without verification that there was a fix. So, Amy, thank you, is helping me. A publisher can't implement the fix until after the final vote, so sometimes they do provide a a a separate file that that is a mock up of what they will do. But I think to your point of do they have the data yes if the reviewer is not comfortable with what they see there's no they don't have to accept the flag she she's well within her right to say no Okay, so according to what Amy just said there are still things in here that are
flagged that there is no fix for currently. There are some publishers who did not respond to the flags, and therefore there is no fix. Okay. So now so that kinda contradicted what you just said where you said all fixes are available for us to see and All fixes that were that were submitted are available for you to see. Yes. Okay. So not all flags have a fix submitted? That is correct. So the testifier is saying that she was feeling pressure to remove her flags to clean up her report. We don't know whether those were submitted or not. I can go look at each one of those and see if there was information provided. I can't I'm not able to pull that right now.
I'm not, but I'm happy to show you. In who would be in charge of verifying that? Is that y'all? Is that Safal? When a when a reviewer is being pressured to change their flags, to remove their flags, who is number one, who is applying that pressure? And number two, who is verifying that there's already a fix in place when you're asking that reviewer to remove their flags? I wouldn't characterize it as pressure. The Well, I think that was her words. I think that's just so that's how that's how the reviewer felt. I understand. And I appreciate her feeling there, and I I think I acknowledge that that there was urgency on our part to
address those. And if that came off as pressure, that wasn't our intent, but I understand the impact there. The information is available. We can run a report on which ones have been addressed, which ones have not been addressed. And typically, we label something as a publisher response that they have hit accept or reject. We have a dashboard where they log in, and they're required to go through that and hit accept or reject and then provide evidence or a rationale to each one. So typically, after a publisher has completed that, we log in, we see on our end for staff side or one of our subcontractors it's a
fall, we'll note, okay, this publisher has responded, let me forward that back to the review team and see if it addresses, their flags. And so that iterative process happened for all three zero four products, for all 200 plus suitability reviewers, over the past two weeks. And then there's still more, that publishers have the opportunity to respond to if it came up in new content or came up in a different appeal, over the next few weeks. So, there's definitely data there. I I hate that someone felt pressured because that was not our intent, and I and I'm happy to to own that and go back and look at
our training and and our process to make sure that that doesn't happen in the future. Okay. And I would appreciate a report on actually which flags have been addressed and which haven't because when I look at this preliminary report, I don't have but now I don't have an accurate representation of fixes on these flags. Now I have something that says, oh, there's zero flags. Well, now there's zero flags just because a publisher intends to do an action feature. No, ma'am. All all flags are are if they if it was flagged by a reviewer, it is in that report, and it is marked. If there is a response from the publisher that is not necessarily evident in your
report yet it will be in November Okay, because this is not Reflective of the exhaustive report you sent me last week. There's differences. Which I sent with you that report last week where I said there's some data validation I need to do. There might be some that that were incorrect duplicates. So, yes, there might be slight differences between the printed version and what I sent you last week, but I'm happy to give you a crosswalk of those differences. Yes. I would appreciate that because I don't want any consistencies on this data because we're making very big decisions. I agree. And we need we need accurate data. I can't I can't make great decisions on flawed data.
I need accurate data. So when you tell me that, a reviewer submitted something that is illegal in the state of Texas as a flag, and then I see on a report, on an exhaustive report that says they intend to correct that but I have no data to show that it's corrected, that could lead me down a path to, approving a material that's illegal. There is this the verification of changes process that happens after that where we would be able to then verify that the change happened as it was promised by the publisher if that is the case. But I that doesn't take away your concern. I share the same value in wanting to get accurate data.
Publishers share the same value. They wanna make sure that their product is is held in the best light. And I'm happy to work with you to to work through that process and make sure you have the information you need to make an informed decision. Well, I think based on testimony, her testimony and your testimony, I think we need to seriously look at what's happening with Safal. I think there are some serious concerns with how this is actually being executed with the reviewers. I I would I would again That's not a question. That's kind of of a statement. I would again state that that the bug stops with me. So I'm happy to kind of sit down with you and look through that process,
regardless who our third party contractor is. I think that's my responsibility. So, I take that critique, and I'm happy to sit down with you and figure out what we can do better to to improve the process, because, again, we all share the same goal. We want really high quality and improve the process because again, we all share the same goal. We want really high quality instruction materials out there in the state that are aligned to Texas values that meet your suitability rubric, and this is our second year. And so wanting to make sure that we are are teamed up to make sure that happens. Thank you. Member Hall? So, another, you know, and member Ellis addressed this as well. But, another concern that the reviewer had is just the amount of changes that would be
made. Like, she said they took out two weeks from, the first part of the course or something like that. So and I think even you, address this in your presentation of, like it's it would almost be like a committee substitute if you change too much. So how much is too much? And then for that new material that's changed and submitted, so if it's like a quality issue or a suitability issue, does it have to go back through the other filters as well? Or what's the threshold for all that? Yes. It all goes back through through the filter to to use your words. It it goes back through another quality suitability alignment review,
before we get to the the final report. So when I on that slide where I had recalibration, that's what we're doing. We're taking all the information back to reviewers for a second look to make sure that any new content submitted doesn't strike off another issue and another part of the materials or that, things were omitted. There are publishers have a lot of latitude in the process. It's not defined of how big is too big of a change. But we generally, to my point earlier, we value materials getting improved to be a better end product. And so we're pretty flexible with what publishers can submit as changes as long as
we're able to re review it and bring you all accurate information so you can make an informed vote Member Revelus and then Doctor. Clark Hi, Colin I'm sorry What happens if Microphone please What happens if a reviewer submits a flag that, you know, meets all requirements? It's lawful. It's suitable. It's in accordance to state law. But then after review, refuses to remove that flag still? It will remain on the report? It will remain even though it's fully compliant fully you know that that content that
this this Per the board's process on the suitability rubric the the flags are are just that They are flags. They are not a determination. They they are simply meant to call your attention or draw a heat map, if you will, to issues that reviewers had appointed by this body in the product. So the existence of a flag does not mean necessarily that that content is improper or That's correct. Unhelpful. And, you know, while it does merit some attention, it does not mean that we should not approve it or move forward with that. Correct? Correct.
Okay. Thank you. Doctor Clark. Thank you. Colin, when was the last time information was submitted from the reviewers? Do you know? It's an ongoing it's, probably this morning even. So this this report was a snapshot in time from two weeks ago. But, as we get into this school year, reviewers get busy. And so they're working on weekends and evenings, as we're getting information back from publishers. And and so it it just depends on the point in time. But if there's a particular product, we can tell you the last time that we received information. And I think that on the online reports, we do have the time stamp of when we last received information from a publisher.
For sure. So that's where I was headed because based off what the testifier said earlier, it looks in this report that I'm looking at, it looks like the publisher accepted all of it, their comments, as well as said, here's a changes outlined. So we're able to see what the changes will reflect and look like, and that's the whole point. Right? That's correct. And then that information is brought back to the reviewer to say, do you agree or not? And how how much time does the reviewer have to accept or deny it then? We try and get that done in a turnaround of a week,
but we know that it's a crazy time of year when a lot of our reviewers are educators and parents and right? It's not the summer any longer, but we we attempt to get that turned around so that the publisher knows. We wanna make sure that they have ready and and and instant information as much as anyone else. Okay. So just looking at this, it looks like the publisher for the particular things in regards to LeBron James and and all of the justice Sotomayor, all of these were reported on August 18. And here we are September 9, so I would have expected the testifier to have had time to review it between
now and then if that was Right. I don't I don't wanna speak for her, but I think she was saying that she she didn't feel that that information sufficed for her to remove the flag. So I think that's and then that's where we sit. So that's how the flag will remain if she doesn't feel that it was addressed in in a way that was clear enough for her. Thank you. Doctor Young. Doctor Young, I think you're still on mute. Doctor Young, if you can hear us, you're on mute. Sorry. Colin, were you able to provide, like, a review or survey? Yes, ma'am. I don't have the results. I'm looking at my survey people. We've we did a beginning,
middle, and end of IMRA process survey with our reviewers as well as our publishers, and the plan is to share that information back out at the the January after action report. Any reason why we're gonna wait that long to get that information? I'm happy to move it up, the chair and others scheduling wise, or share it before meeting. Yes. It might have been handy for today's conversation also. I didn't hear the request. What was the request? A request for data from our our reviewer survey. Since reviewers are still contracted, we haven't finished the final survey,
but we do have beginning and middle data that I can I can share? Do you have any further questions, Satya Young? Okay. Doctor Ellis. Colin, I wanted interesting discussion from Cheshire. I think where miss Pickering was going with with an interesting line of questions, and I wonder if I can synthesize this because I think I've identified two kind of disconnects that the Royal we have had. I wanna make sure Okay. You agree with that. We have a flag. If it's not addressed, it just stays as it is. They stand on their own. But the ones that are addressed, there is a we will fix that and that's in the reports, right? That's what they promised to fix. I think the touch buyer's concern was we didn't get adequate information on what that
was. And that's where you said that that goes in a separate report of actual changes. Is that correct? A publisher often a publisher is responding to direct feedback whether that is a public comment, a suitability flag, perhaps it was feedback from an MR reviewer during the process and, it's almost a call and response. They get that information, and then they respond to that particular piece of feedback. We do have a section in our dashboard for a publisher to submit a change to their materials that is not directly tied to one specific piece of feedback.
And that's called a publisher initiated change. That is often where publishers are submitting their corrections or their new content related to a suitability flag, just because our system hasn't caught up with that yet. That's what I was looking for. The publisher initiated change, but you said the disconnect may be that that publisher may not have been directed or just shown that We haven't drawn the link between that information and the flag. That could be one disconnect. Yes, sir. The answer was there from the publisher, but they didn't see that. Okay. Then we'll continue on. Then that is in a separate place.
That's not necessarily in the report. It is on the digital report. It is not on your one page printout. Okay. And then the point is if the reviewer goes back and is looking at the link that she made the comment that she doesn't have the link anymore but we all have the public has access to those links. That takes you back to the original material. The original material is not to be changed by the publisher now because that's our baseline. That's what it would look like. The changes have to happen with what is in the publisher initiated change. So the other disconnect would be that if someone feels that I wanna go back
and look and see what the changes were, they weren't made, that's because the original response is not allowed to be changed. Is that correct also? That's correct. The May submission of materials by publishers under review remains frozen in time, so that we have something to compare it to. Publishers are then asked to either create a new instance that has all of their changes for us to see, or they might submit a PDF and link that. But that's also available in the report if they have the new instance. So if you're navigating from the SPOE website you may not see the new instance that the publisher,
put up for to display their changes or responses to feedback but you would see the submission from May 2025. Okay. Because they're not allowed to to change it? Correct. They have to leave that one static until we confirm changes, the following year. Yeah. Thank you. Member Haglund? Chair, I'd, move we go back to item number three. Motion do we have a second motion is second is there any objection without objection we're going to move on to item number three So once again, Item Number three is a report from the Commissioner of Education regarding Instructional Materials Review
and Approval Cycle 2024, Confirmation of Changes, Board Agenda, Page I-twelve. We have no testimony on this. Amy Phillips? Thank you, chair. Amy Phillips, IMRA director, hoping that this will actually close the loop on some of the confusion about the process. So I'm here to present the results of a review conducted for IMRA 2024 approved materials that verified that all of the changes that were promised by publishers throughout the
process leading into that November vote were actually made in the final version. So this is the after the vote action that is taken to make sure that publishers are held accountable for doing what they promised. We had 91 products approved through IMRA 2024, 83 of those had changes that were required as a condition of the vote. That totaled about 3,200 changes and we did convene folks to help us review and confirm that all of those changes were made.
And I'm happy to report that we did confirm every single one of the 3,206 changes that were promised have been made as they were documented on the reports that were presented in November. Member Hall? If thank you for your presentation. I really appreciate you being here. If you had found your reviewers had found that the changes were not made, can you explain to us what would take place then? Absolutely. So this would be the first opportunity for you to consider what you might want to do with those publishers. And you do have within your authority the ability to impose an administrative penalty for
any publisher who fails to make the changes as promised as well as remove them from the list of approved materials. Because the publisher is due the opportunity for a fair hearing, the only action in September should someone have been found not to have made the changes would be to request that staff get that hearing scheduled so that the publisher has an opportunity to respond to you all as the board before you administer penalties. Member Hickman. Hi. So these were materials we approved contingent upon some sort of correction.
The I think to Member Pickering's point, the correction was we will make the correction and then someone went and checked was the correction made 3,000 times. Who was the judge or the reviewer who checked each correction? Sure. We have a grant with several of the education service centers around the state, And so we divvy that work out amongst those folks. And then we held weekly office hours with them to address any questions, concerns, troubles they were having. And if we had a concern about one of the 3,000,
I'm assuming you have a report somewhere we could look at what was the required correction, what correction was actually made and for us does it satisfy that it was made? Yes, sir. So the corrections that were required are listed in the previous IMRA cycle tile on your SVOE website. So you can see what the required corrections were. Now to have access to the materials for you to go in and view them, we would need to share that access with you. That's not something that's publicly available because after the materials are approved and added to
the list, we respect the publisher's copyright and so we will allow anyone to come see it in person, at TEA or their nearest ESC or we can share that with you. Okay. Thank you. Member Pickering. Hi, Amy. I think there's a big misconception around the state with a lot of people that the ESCs are a division of the Texas Education Agency. And we know they're not. We know they're private corporations. Okay. So in that capacity, these are private corporation employees who are now reviewing these over 3,000
submissions. And a lot of these ESCs have contracts with these publishers, correct, on a private site? I can't speak to the contracts that the ESCs have. Okay. Well, I think we can verify that, that they do. They have private contracts with, publishers or recommendations for contracts for publishers. Okay. So number one, how do we avoid that conflict of interest? And then number two is who is training the reviewers at the ESCs since they are just private corporation employees? Who's training them on state law? So that whenever we have something that violates our SB12,
right, moving forward. And then the publisher submits a new lesson or lessons or whatever it is, if it's thematic or individual, who is training that private corporation employee on what SB 12 says since they're the ones who's approving the edit or approving the redo? How do they know? You all approved the edit. So the ESC is not approving that the edit is appropriate or suitable or compliant. They are approving that the edit that was in the report that this board approved
as a required change was made exactly the way that it's listed on that report. And so the content itself that was part of the change was approved by this body in November. Okay. So then you just said that we need the hyperlinks so to go verify, correct? You all would need the login credentials to the post approval versions if you would like to go into those post approval materials and do the side by side with those reports to verify. Yes, ma'am. Yes. Because I just and maybe because we were dealing with so many things, I just don't remember a report sent to me with 3,000
changes asking me to approve each change. Those were provided at the November meeting for prior to the vote. Right. But I'm just saying that whenever that was presented to us Gotcha. It was told to us that the ESCs had verified that. So that's why I'm asking who at the ESA who at the ESC? If it's being presented to me that there was already somebody paid to verify those changes, well, then is it paid just to see that, oh, there was a change made? Right? There's a comma now instead of a period? Or is it verifying the changes that, okay, this was actually flagged that it violated a quality rubric or suitability rubric or whatever
is in place? Are they verifying that actually the flag was addressed and the correction happened? Or are they just verifying that a submission was made? Because I don't think that was ever clearly conveyed to us that each member sitting around this table had to independently go and verify all 3,000 changes that they were compliant with the will of this body. Let me try to map this out because it will continue to be very confusing as we've got reviews layered on top of reviews and things happening simultaneously. So last November, the final reports that we provided to this board in advance of the meeting,
those changes had not been verified by the ESC. That was not a part of their work. That is this, back and forth that we've been talking about for appeals and ability to submit editorial changes and other things that publishers want to be true about the version that you all are approving in the November where you're approving things for that cycle. So in this case, IMRA 2024, we presented this body with these are the changes that the publishers are agreeing to make if you should approve them.
And at that point, it is up to each member to decide, is this enough? Are these changes appropriate? Do they comply with the law? All of those things. Now this year we've put in some extra steps where we're taking all of that content back through all of the reviewers who have been trained on the law and the expectations. And so that was a step that we didn't do last year that we have implemented as a process improvement. So now we can say this November all your reviewers have seen all of these changes and had the opportunity to put in additional suitability
flags, flag additional errors, make a comment, whatever needs to happen with those changes. So for IMR25 when we come to you, we're saying all of your reviewers have seen these things. Now it's up to you. Do you wish to move forward allowing this publisher to be approved on the condition that they will make all of the changes in the reports that we provide? So back to this one, now we're fast forwarding past that November vote and now it is more of an administrative task of these are the changes that the SVOE said need to happen in order for this product to remain on the approved list.
Yes or no, did the publisher make the change? They do not get to judge whether or not that change is appropriate or compliant or any of those things because that work already happened by November. Okay. And then on that last step on the follow through, who determines that? The ESCs, y'all, who determines that? On whether or not the change was made? On whether the change that was made is compliant with state law and then compliant with the will of this board. You all made that decision No. I'm talking about moving forward. Oh, moving forward. Past. It will still remain the same.
So when we come to you in November at the next meeting, we will be coming to you this time with the information we've received from the reviewers about any of those changes, should there be information to share, and that it will still be and always be the the will of this board to look at those changes and make that determination, the final determination. Okay. But I guess what I'm talking about is those changes are actually gonna be changes, not a we will do. That is something that will continue to remain true. So the the publishers required by your rule to submit what they intend to go through this
process, and they're not allowed to change it. All they're allowed to do is propose changes. And And so when we say propose changes, it has to be specific. So we tell them if you can fit it in this tiny little text box and tell us exactly what the new text is going to say so the reviewers can see, I'm going to replace paragraph two with this new paragraph two and this is exactly what paragraph two will say, then that is what we give them and that is what they make their judgment call on. There is not an opportunity for the publisher to go in and actually change paragraph two because that would violate your rules.
And so everything is a promise, but this confirmation of changes is verifying that that promise was upheld. Okay. So if this at the final let's say let's say the final final that's not really the final because it's not complete yet. Right. Okay. At the oh, let's say the semifinal. The semifinal. Okay. At that point, if we say if if this body says that we want these changes made, right, but we've already kinda given our final approval, who verifies that? When you say verify, I can say we're we are not verifying compliance with laws and rules and things.
We send that to the reviewers. They're looking at that information and making that determination based on their training. You all make the final determination as you do your vote as to this change. Right. So how come we have voted that we'll approve this contingent on XYZ? That is the EFC verification. So if XYZ has to be very specific to say on page 92, we expect to see this stage. Now back to my original question. Okay. Who who trains the ESCs on what the law says is required to fulfill?
Because sometimes we'll come back and we'll say, oh, this has three queuing. Right? Or this has, DEI or CRT, whatever. Okay? Anything. The things that are banned. Who trains the private who trains the employee of the private corporation of the ESC on what Texas Law says is CRT, is DEI, is three queuing? So that they're verifying that our wishes are made, are completed. So your wishes have to be very specific. I'm sorry. She's out of time. I believe you would need to raise a point of order to be recognized. Point of order? What's your point of order?
Member Pickering is out of time. Ten minutes. I'll uphold that. Mister Chairman, may I request just enough time for Amy to finish her answer on who's providing the training for the ESC, employees? I will recognize you for a motion to grant yourself more time. Please be specific like Amy is saying. I will be very specific. Minutes you would like? I will request one minute for Amy to finish on who is training the employees of the ESCs. Okay. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. We have a motion to second. Is there any objection to member picker on having one extra minute?
Okay. All those in favor of we have objection over here. So all those in favor of member Pickering getting granted an extra minute, please show by raising your hand. Five. All those imposed, please show a raise in your hand. Four five four carries. You have one minute. Member Pickering. Go ahead, Amy. Please tell me who trains the ESE employees. Thank you, ma'am. I don't know that I'm making this clear because the ESC employees are just verifying that the changes that you all said have to happen have happened. And the changes cannot be vague and that like this product can no longer have
3Qing. It needs to be I found 3Qing on page 54 and the publisher said I am going to change 54 to look exactly like this. And then this board has said okay, that's fine. I accept that change. I am comfortable saying that this no longer has three queuing and is now okay to be on the approved list. The ESC's only job is to take that information from that report that lists the specific changes and verify that specific change was made. All of the determinations about whether or not it violates law or complies with law
is suitable, high quality, all of that has already happened at the November meeting. What's your point of order? The minute has expired. Sustained. Anybody else have a question for Amy? Please confirm my understanding. We don't need to take any action here. No, you do not. Okay. Member Brooks? Is this a good time to discuss the rejection list? This is a good time to discuss the confirmation of changes. Yes. So I don't know how to get to Z, but I would love to see if the board would want to
consider the process of the rejection list moving it over to Does not remain to the posting. Oh, that's not for 2024, this number three? This is the confirmation of changes. So do you have anything related to that? No. But Mr. Chair, point of information? What's your point of information? Can you tell me which item number would be a good time to discuss the rejected list from last FINRA process? Not today. Okay. Further discussion? Okay. Thank you, Amy. Alright the time is 12:40 we're through with three items
Do you want to take a thirty minute lunch break now or try to make it through another item? Lunch break? Keep rolling? Okay. We'll go to number four. Number four is approval of proposed quality rubrics for instructional materials and review and approval cycle 2026. I'd like to welcome Colin back. Hello. If you'll give me a moment to set up the PowerPoint. Members, this We have one. Does the fire change? Oh, thank you. I've been buzzed. We'll do public testimony now. I'll call on Mary Lowe. Thank you, Board. I am here today to say kudos to the Board.
I am a parent, of his 36 year old, so they're not in the public school system. But, I'm not an educator by profession at this point in my life, and there were many parents and stakeholders that were involved in the IMRA review process this year. And I just want to say kudos, not sure who's responsible for a lot of the things, but this Board prepared a fabulous quality and suitability review. The suitability review was wonderful, and I'm here today to ask you to revise it.
After reviewing content, there does seem to be a lot of screen time, and this is a place that you can send a message to the instructional material providers and textbook providers to limit gamification, to limit screen time. And as most of you know, that is the hill that I die on is too much screen time. So I'm just here to say thank you for what you're doing and ask that you revise the suitability to limit screen time and gamification in the instructional material.
Thank you so much. Thank you, Ms. Love. Before I open it up to questions, just want to make sure that we're staying germane to the topic. So the topic is the quality rubric, not the suitability rubric. So can I just say there was no place on the agenda that specified, which is the reason I signed up in this spot? So wasn't trying to be passive aggressive or whatever, what are you trying to do? No, you're aggressive aggressive. And I value that. But I can respect that, but it's just going to keep us out of trouble. So in accordance with operating rules,
like technically, that would have to happen on Friday. But insomuch as we have comments on the quality rubric, last year, little. Well, thank you for your time, Mary. I know you put in a lot of effort on that. And I believe this is with the quality rubric as well as the suitability rubric. The reviewers were told not to have any conversations with the State Board of Education. Was that both quality and suitability? Or you may not even know that since you were just one off. Yes. My understanding, we were asked to restrict our communication across the board, whether it be Okay.
We're out of order again. So we're back on we're back this is pertaining to what happened last year. We're looking forward on this agenda item. If you'd like to make a motion to go backwards, I will recognize you for that. Just giving you opportunity. Member Brooks, did you have a question? I did, but it it wasn't it was about Microphone, please. I can't hear you. Did you finish your testimony? She did. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I I just But I can't ask her anything about it. Is it You can ask her anything about the approval of proposed quality rubrics for
instructional materials review and approval cycle 2026. We're looking to the future. All right. So given your experience, what are your recommendations for 2026, specifically as it has to do with the reviews of the materials? Yes. I found the process to be very respectful and easy to understand and that there was follow through on any feedback or remarks that were made in the process. I also had access to everything. I would say just in general feedback that sometimes the content could be a little
more challenging to directly access, but the people who were in charge of Safal and whatever Collins' team is called, the Emery Review, they are aware that there needed to be some more streamlined access to the material. And did you have an opportunity to review any textbook forms or were all the materials in digital format? All of the material was in digital format. But I do believe for me. But I do believe there were a few cases where textbooks were available.
But I can't just speak to my own process. It was all digital. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you. So I've huddled up with Vice Chair Little and her question that she was gonna ask. We're gonna get to an agenda item five in the future today hopefully. Anything else from this low? Okay. Nope. Digestive. Alright. Hello, members. I'll direct you back to your big binder. We are item four today on your agenda is looking forward to EMRA twenty '26. So at any given time,
we will be juggling three reviews at different stages from now until we stop doing this. Right? So we've just wrapped up Emmer Cycle 2024. We are in the midst of Emmer Cycle 2025, and these are rubrics that will be, hopefully used in Emmer Cycle 2026, meaning that materials reviewed against these rubrics, will be available not this coming school year, but the the school year after. And so, I'm gonna, again, give us some context on where we've been, and how we found ourselves at this place. So in April,
my team and I brought you all some rubric drafts for career and technical education, as well as for fine arts k 12. So that's the red boxes on the screen. Then in June, we we brought you another set of drafts for supplemental reading language arts as well as positive character traits, and that's the the blue boxes here. So during that time, we conducted public feedback sessions, stakeholder feedback sessions to take our initial draft and then present what we have to you here today. As you'll note in September, there is a rubric missing,
which is, positive character traits. Given the uniqueness of that subject matter and the grade bands, it is different than anything else that we've reviewed. We decided to take a little bit more time on that rubric instead of bringing you one, that may be not ready for approval. And so, today, we only have the the three rubrics for you, career and technical education, fine arts, and supplemental reading language arts. And this is way back. It's towards the end of your binder if you're you gotta get past all the the reports. You got it there. Mhmm. Member Brooks, may I respond,
ask a question? Yes. Mister Dempsey, so when will we have the behavior traits rubric, please? My goal is to to bring that back in early twenty twenty six, at a less busy meeting time. Is it possible at our next meeting so we can review it before 2026? No. It it honest, frankly, and and where we are in the development, it's it's not going to be ready with wrapping up. I don't think we realized how much we were we were biting off this too with with three MR cycles at once as well as prepping rubrics, and that's yeah. It's a capacity constraint.
K. And and for your, I think it's another item today, your, writing MRAA summary or or suggestions from feedback. Do you have something with the original, like cross outs or something? Does that make sense? Yes, ma'am. I I'll get to this here in a second, but you should have three, free materials for each rubric group. So for career and technical education, you have an approved sorry, a draft rubric that's a clean version on top. Underneath that is a a rubric that has been marked up,
meaning it shows the red line changes from what we presented to you on this timeline, at a previous meeting till today. And then you have a third document, which is a summary of the public feedback we received during these public feedback time frames. And so you have one for career and technical education, all three of those documents, one for supplemental reading language arts, as well as one for, fine arts, k through 12. Yes. But do you have the original for the writing, the the rubric? I don't in this binder. It is available online. I can have staff come direct you to it.
Or just email it to me? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Are you are you and to clarify, sorry, the member of the are you requesting, k five reading language arts full subject? Whatever is being referred to when in the writing section, in the handwriting section. So if it probably is just k through Understood. Thank you. Members, any mister Hickman. Thank you, Colin. Let me see if I can get to where member Brooks was going a minute ago. So if there was a book that we reject this year and they decide to
go through the cycle again, is this would they be judged on the new rubric? And then they they kind of start from scratch and the old scores are wiped out? We are not we are not revising any rubrics that currently exist in this item. We are only looking at rubrics that have not yet existed in this item. But to answer your question, if the rubric is revised quality wise, we are not I guess, we're we are we've been grandfathering those materials then, so we haven't been going back and reviewing and requalifying the rubrics. If the ticks are to change in the future,
then, yes, it would require the board to move all those things off the list and have them re reviewed. But at the moment, this is just about new sets of instruction materials, that are in one of these three categories that have not yet had an opportunity to go through MRR. Okay. So you're today, we're just looking at new CTE rubrics, the math. Yep. That that one has all that. Okay. And then my other question, I flipped through the CTE, it looked a little shorter. How many of your stakeholders said these rubrics really need to have be a lot bigger and have a lot more criteria? Very few,
which I think you'll be happy to hear. Okay. I I think the and the one that is the longest, which is the reading language arts supplemental rubric is allows for publishers to opt in to certain sections and not based on how their material is designed. And so it does look even longer, but but indeed it will be it should be a a shorter review for those products compared to Is that an adaptive material? An adaptive rubric. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. I'm I'm paying attention. So I can't, leave without saying any opportunity to streamline would be appreciated from my seat here.
Loud and clear. Yep. I hear you. Member mayor. Colin, remind me how how do we have, CTE batched? What what what's batch one, what's batch two, and what's batch three? Yes, sir. So member Mainer's question is, you know, there's 400 plus courses in career and technology or sorry, CTE. Are we planning to do all of them in the next M Recycled? The answer is no. We have batched them into three, maybe two groups. But this first batch, I won't know them off the top of my head, but they are available on our website, which I'll have our team give you right now, and it lists each course.
But in general, it's the ones that were new Teak Space Forces. So I think, like, aeronautical engineering might be one of those, and then and then a a smattering of others. But it's about 60 plus courses that would be part of this first tranche of, career and technical education. You're gonna get those for me? Okay. And then any any courses where you would approve revisions by April are would be included in this first batch. So we'll get you the the precise list. Okay. That might might might be helpful for us in terms of maybe, you know, recruiting reviewers. Yes. Yes. So,
again, we all know this, but it it's worth repeating. This process compounds each year. As we add the quality rubrics, there are more and more materials that fall under the umbrella of the the MR review. You might be wondering, well, why fine arts now and not two years from now? We took a cue, or this body took a cue from, the previous proclamation process where fine arts, instructional materials contracts are lapsing in the next couple of years, and this would be the natural next set of instructional materials that a school district would be looking to procure.
And so we try to and your ten year plan up here on the screen, align all of those priorities of, TEKS revisions ongoing, focusing on on core subjects first, and then also understanding that districts when they fall into a gap year for contract purchases, it becomes more expensive. And so the the more we can reduce those gap years in procurement, meaning there's a lapsed statewide approved contract, the better. And so that's for cycle 2026, these materials would end up in classrooms in the 2728 school year,
and again, we just finished talking about, two items ago, cycle 2020 or cycle 2025, which are the materials that are gonna be, voted by this body in November. I have a question on this one. It looks like, I don't know the term of art. It's spiraling, adding, compounding. So everything in cycle 24 is in '25, is in '26. When Correct. When is the next time we build the list and how big will the list be when we add products? January 2026. And how big can we make January 26?
Yes. A few months from now, we'll be here back back here. How how big can that list be? Please don't quote me on this. We're we're looking at capacity, but anywhere this year so we did a 142 products in year one, three hundred plus products this year. It's probably in the range of, like, 400 to 500, but we need to dial that in based on number of reviewers, how many folks are gonna plan to join us again next year, who submits. Last year, we had 600 products, so we would've we would've had to review all those. But, I think we're getting to the point where we're we're understanding this process better, and can get up to that 400,
500 mark. Okay. And I think to I think member Brooks and member Pickering both were talking about past materials earlier. If there's a rejected material somebody wanted to add to the list or an approved material someone wanted to add to the list, we could do that in January and put a 24, 25 material on the list? And that would to be reviewed? To be reviewed. Yes. Yeah. You run it run it through the process again. That's correct. We wanna take another look either move it up or move it down or Yes. Okay. And that would count against our quote of say,
400 if if that's the number? Yes, sir. Okay. Sure, Brooks. Thank you. I have a couple of questions and mister chair, maybe you can help me. And that is on our agenda, it says that we are the state board of education for Microphone, please. The on the on the agenda, it says we're the state board for career and technology education. What does that mean? Can you point me to where you're reading? So on our agenda on page two, state board of education, state board for career and technology education. Mister chair. Mister mayor? Mister chair, I can address that for you.
I don't know where we are. I can't. Page two. On the agenda. Yeah. So just wanna go back to to 1917 when the federal government first passed the Smith Hughes Act, which provided support for for vocational education as we called it back then. The state was required to have a a state board of vocational education. At that time, it was a separate board. Carl Perkins still requires us to have a a a state board for current technical education. Just as as a matter of of expedience,
this board, being that we handle all of those things, is also designated as the state board for current and technical education as well as the state board of education. Thank you, mister Meniere. I appreciate that. Mister Dempsey. Okay. So my question is you have a red line copy. So this is our first time getting the the this rubric. Right? Please. For for CTE, this is our first so you did give them out? So the the what we redlined there was the original submission from April 2025. So we we presented a first draft ahead of community feedback,
in April 2025, and now we're it's been a break. We're we're we've come back to you now in September with what we've learned and a marked up version of the rubric, to be approved by this body. As second reading or first reading or This isn't rule Microphone, please. Mhmm. Primer Brooks, can you move your microphone closer? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. To repeat your question, you're you're wondering is this first reading or second reading on the rubric? This, the rules about, first reading, second reading discussion for it applies to rule text. These rubrics are not that. However, this will be the second time that you have seen this draft,
and then we're we're hopefully going to a final vote at Friday for the general meeting. And we're able to make amendments today? No. That's what I was just about to say. As we discussed in the in the past, these are not amendable. So that when they brought them for April, we can approve them, we don't amend them. That's from the statute. Further questions for Colin? Do you want to continue? Yes, sir. Thank you. So members wanted to give you an overview of how we got feedback and who we heard from in those intervening months since April. And so, we held,
focus groups, working groups, as well as took public comments. With our focus groups, those were promoted amongst our our agency listservs. We also shared those resources with you all in April and then again in your June meeting to share out with others. Apologies. In order to to get industry feedback, especially for CTE, and and other input. We also had our our working group, which was an internal team, three to five educators who were subject matter experts to help us, ingest all of that feedback, make sense of it, and and come up with the drafts that you see in front of you today.
And then finally, we had, an open public comment for folks, who wanted to submit feedback. We asked them to say whether they were for or against the rubrics as proposed, as well as provide general comments if they had them. And so how many people showed up? For career and technical education, we had a total of 52 educators and 10 staffers from ESCs. For fine arts, 21 educators and two ESC staff, supplemental reading language arts. I'll let you all read the charts. But, in general, we had a a large response from publishers, which I think is encouraging that are that are plugged into the MR process now
that we're three years in, and we're able to give us a lot of feedback that that's really helpful. We'd rather know it now than when we are in, you know, knee deep into a a review cycle, and and publishers are thinking, this rubric doesn't really measure our products the way that we think it shines puts them in the best light. So, I was happy to see the amount of publisher participation as well as parents and community feedback on on these rubrics. And then, I think going through the stakeholder work group, these were the internal folks that we gathered, as subject matter experts to again, take in that feedback and and provide out,
the draft that you see before you. So, weighing all that feedback and and making sure that we were keeping aligned to the priorities of the Immer process, and that we're maintaining a high bar for high quality that that it does actually reflect a high quality bar of instructional materials. Some of that one. Okay. And so as part of these feedback sessions, one question that we asked is if our drafts, would lead to the identification of high quality materials in the content areas. I think for the most part, stakeholders agreed that the drafts as written, would would get us there.
I think those that disagreed, we tried to incorporate that feedback into the red line markup for CTE, fine arts, and supplemental reading language arts. But I think we were encouraged to see that on our attempt, we we got really close to the mark for a lot of our our key stakeholders with these drafts. And so, I'll pause here for questions about the process to get to these drafts or the feedback sessions, but then, to give you a preview, I'd like to cover the specific feedback for each rubric and break it down by each rubric section, but I'll pause here if any questions about the process up to this point.
Sure. Vice Chair Little. Mister chair, I would like to make the motion that we approve the quality rubric rubrics for full subject Tier one instructional material, career and technical education, CTE for high school, full subject Tier one instructional materials for fine arts for grades K through 12 and supplemental K through five language arts and reading for the instructional materials review and approval process. A motion and a second. Would you like to speak about it? Vice Chair Little, would you like to speak about it? No, sir.
Member Hickman? Collin, who is the author of these? My team, the agency staff. Okay. So I'm just wondering, is this kind of universally accepted that this is how everyone defines quality? Can you say more about that question? I'm not quite sure how that Sure. Yes, catching you off guard. I don't know if you were here yesterday. We had a lot of fun. We talked about Louisiana and Tennessee and we looked at what they were doing. Would Louisiana and Tennessee define quality the same way and have the same kind of rubric and the same sort of criteria? There are common threads where that other states,
have tried to identify this. I think this is a good reminder that we are on the forefront of this process of putting our stake in the ground as a state. Not many states have. There's a handful of others to whom we did compare our rubrics, after we came up with our draft just to check our thinking and make sure we weren't way out in left field. And I think we drew some inspiration from others, especially on supplemental reading language arts, on the breakdown of having a publisher opt in to certain quality sections, the adaptive version. But I would say in general,
these are predicated on research based instructional strategies that we've used at the agency to form our other rubrics. And so we have looked at other states. I can't say if they're completely aligned with others out there. But I will say that there is it is generally accepted that high quality materials will contain, especially the implementation quality, the purple section of the rubric. And then we get into content specific stuff in the green section for learning quality. And that's where there might be some variation. Okay. Because but I think we've talked about flashcards. So flashcards would be a supplemental math product.
And probably wouldn't satisfy a whole lot of the quality rubric, but works as intended, you know, for is effective for its purpose. Mhmm. How would how is that judged if it's designed for one, you know, on a supplemental one little thing and it does it well but doesn't satisfy the rest of the quality rubric? Yes, I think, the size of a component and what it's designed to do is important when thinking through the supplemental rubrics and that's why in this proposed rubric for RLA, if I'm a publisher who's designed an RLA material to supplement reading fluency,
I don't think I should be measured against the yardstick for handwriting necessarily because my product wasn't designed to do that. And so, the, the design approach for Arlay supplemental was to meet the needs of the supplemental landscape for materials. And, in your example for math, I think, you know that flashcards don't come with a teacher or a lesson. A letter flashcard so it's got an A or a pattern of math. Yeah, letter awareness I, it may do well but, I think this is really looking at high quality materials that are meant to be
substantial and not just maybe a center in in one child's classroom or, one homework assignment. They're they're truly meant to be, comprehensive. And though it might be supplemental, meaning it's meant to support the tier one instruction in that classroom, that doesn't mean that it's small or that it's it's only one thing. So I think products that are are hyper focused would not do well against this rubric. But if they are opting into the right sections of the quality rubric, telling us how they intend for their material to be used, I think it does a really good job of measuring those differences.
Okay. Thank you. Member Pickering. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So Colin, along the idea of the supplemental, we heard testimony last November last year when we were going through this. We heard testimony from school districts that actually said that they bring curriculum together from supplemental materials. They kind of devise their own. I think you confirmed that in your testimony last November also that that is happening around the state. So, I think member Hickman and I might be of a certain age together where we do remember our flashcards. However, that's not really what's happening in education now. In Texas,
a lot of the supplemental materials are on digital platforms. And so I think that we do need to apply our full quality and our full suitability rubric to all materials including supplemental, especially in light of your testimony and school district's testimony last year that they're actually using supplemental materials to create full tier one instruction. Yeah. So I'll note that I think because I normally say these together, so I'm imagining this is what I said, is that you cannot tier two your way out of a tier one instruction materials problem. Right? Supplemental materials cannot be cobbled together to make a high quality full set of instructional
materials. They could be, but it's not gonna be great. Right? And so the idea of these supplemental rubrics, especially for RLA, is that this is meant to supplement, to support an already used tier one full subject product in the classroom. It is not meant to be the end all, be all. That's a full subject product that we're already reviewing for. There's lots of products on the approved list that already do that. This is meant to supplement. And you can get into different conversations about, do we are we supporting struggling readers? Are we advancing advanced readers? Right? Are we meeting the needs of all students? But yes,
supplemental materials should not is not advised to put them together in that way to come up with a tier one set of instructional materials. But it is happening. Correct? Oh, yes. I think that was one of the emphasis for for House Bill 16 o five originally. Thank you. Member Brooks. Thank you. So just for clarification. So the rubrics are not a part of the SVOE input or anything Because we started with giving our input, and so now that's not allowed. So from the statute, the agency owns the quality rubrics.
They have to be approved by the board. So the agency came to us in April and asked for our comments and our feedback. We provide them. They have incorporated some subset of that, maybe all of it. I'm not sure. And then they're here for the approval of it today. So moving forward, the process is we give no input whatsoever in any rubric for the consideration of the State Board of Education's approved materials. That's 100% not what I said. I said they came in April and asked for feedback.
We had a discussion about it. We gave them feedback. They can choose to incorporate that or not. If you don't think they incorporated it well enough, then you could choose when the board could choose to not approve the rubric. That's our decision point. And that's from the statute. Sorry. I see. I jumped ahead because I was answering a question. I'll go back to where we were on CTE if I confused you. Apologies. So slide 12, if you're if you're following along in your PowerPoint. So I wanted to, I'll go through each rubric and just give a brief summary of the feedback. Again, you have a more in-depth set of information, which has graphs and charts that summarizes the feedback per rubric.
But I think in general the majority of stakeholders recommended keeping our indicators as we presented them to you, at the previous board meeting. There are some minor revisions that we applied adding CTE specific examples because we know that that CTE is a broad subject area. Right? Covering covering lots of different things. And I think the other things that we tried to address were in section five around career investigations and development, where we added the word relevant and regional or statewide for for more localized label mark sorry,
tongue twister, more localized labor market data analysis. Additionally, in 5.2 a and 5.2 b, we revised to ensure direct instruction and student practice are aligned to both the TEKS as well as the Texas CTE employability skills standards which y'all believe addressed at your last board meeting. We got a lot of additional feedback that whose grain size was not appropriate. It was it was too detailed for the rubric. However, we are going we do plan to incorporate that into our evidence guides, which are, the guides for reviewers and help them to see examples,
non examples of of scoring well on the rubric. And so we're we're taking all this information and carrying it forward as we develop those other tools and resources for, career and technical education, publishers. And so overall, I think we received a lot of positive feedback from publishers and stakeholders alike, and are happy with where we landed with the draft in front of you. So I'll pause there for questions on CTE quality rubric. Hearing none. Alright. I'll move forward with, k 12 fine arts. Again, we we had a positive response from our our fine arts field.
Majority of stakeholders recommended that we we keep the draft as written. There was a minor change, in section four where we were trying not to double dip on some, categories for quality. And then again, we we had, we had, more feedback that we're gonna incorporate into the evidence guides. But I think the, rubrics as drafted and for those following along at home, they are available on the SOE's website in their their final form on which the board will vote if you need to look at that. But, these these fine arts quality rubrics, I think are setting a really high bar for full subject tier one products.
I'll note that there aren't as many products out there that will reach the high quality bar as we maybe saw in math or reading, just because, this hasn't been something that fine arts publishers have oriented themselves to, same with CTE. There there's going to be a very high bar for high quality instructional materials. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be part of the review. I'm just naming that I think, there will be some work for publishers to do. If they didn't have daily lesson plans, it's not going to score well. And so they need to make sure that they have those inside of their materials. If they didn't have teacher supports or supports for,
bilingual students, emerging bilingual students, then they're they're not going to score well. And so making sure that publishers are aware of the the new high watermark for high quality instruction materials in the state of Texas, I think it's gonna be one of the the challenges of this rubric moving forward. But, we got a lot of positive feedback from publishers that this is the right direction to go. Questions on on fine arts? We'll keep it rolling. Finally, we had the the supplemental reading language arts rubric for k five. And I wanna point out that this would be applied to both, Spanish reading language arts as well as English reading language arts because there are those
separate ticks, for that subject, right, of of Spanish reading language arts. But the the rubric will still apply to both. From the last time you saw our draft, we did make some minor revisions for clarity, focusing, you know, specifying high frequency words must be from research based list and not just coming out of nowhere. We did make some universal changes, that are relevant to all indicators to to make sure that it was consistent. And, again, the reminder that this rubric is different than any other rubric we've produced or or brought before you before where a publisher will have the opportunity in
early next year, if this is approved, to state which quality sections they think their rubric should be judged against. That if they're designed for only handwriting, then we're only measuring them against that metric and not for other metrics for which their supplemental product is not designed. That doesn't apply to full subject products where we do need them to cover all of the ticks, but we thought it was appropriate, especially in feedback that we received from publishers in the reading language arts space. So, again, that's a brief overview of members of the summary of feedback, but having to take specific questions or or concerns about individual rubrics.
Yeah. Member Hickman. Just a general comment and this goes against everything I've said the past few years is, like math is a better example. My kid will bring home a math problem and I'll say well let's see the book and let's see how the subject is laid out, the example problems and then we can look through all of that and figure out how to solve this problem. So I know there's a lot of educator, focused teacher supports. I would also suggest adding in their parental supports for when the parents are helping
the kids with the homework, whatever subject it is, is there somewhere in the material that kind of explains explains the problem or explains the topic and then helps the parents help the kid? Yes. I believe it is found in section 2.1. It's in the twos. It's in the purple section for parental support. Section 1.2. It should be the same for for all the rubrics in the purple section. 1.2 b, if I'm in the I go from 1.1 to 2.1. Are you so I'm looking at fine arts as an example. Oh, fine arts. Okay. Fine arts page three of the rubric at the top.
Page three of 15. 1.2 b, materials contain supports for families in both Spanish and English for each unit with suggestions on supporting the progress of their students. So, again, this is something that we believe is important that that parents understand what their children are learning at home, are learning in school, and would expect to see it inside of a set of high quality instruction materials even if it's, well, this will be full subject, but also if it's a supplemental product. Yeah. Because I had this conversation with the publisher and, again, a math example, they just kind of go from problem to problem. It's adaptive. The problems get harder,
but there wasn't really a full layout of the topic and examples and, you know, worked examples to that would help the parents if they don't know how to solve that kind of problem. Member Hall? You mentioned that the rubrics are nuance for supplemental to where, you gave the example of TEEX alignment that if it was just designed to to focus on one specific area like handwriting, then it wouldn't have to go through the full Tieks alignment process. Is there any other aspect of the of the rubric or any other filter that wouldn't have to pass through? Like, it has to go through suitability and quality,
just not TIX alignment. Is that how that works? It will go through TIX alignment, but only to the TIX that are relevant to the product. So if if you're only doing the handwriting TIX, then you need to hit a 100% of those. And then for the quality section, there's also opting into the different quality sections. But you're correct that all those other that slide that have the six things on, still gotta do tweaks alignment, else alignment. The quality sections that you can sign up for, the entire suitability rubric, parent portal access, all those things that come with MRAA are still required. Reprez, yes. Thank you, sir. Colin, so I just for clarity,
so this rubric this rubric will cover, specifically around not not necessarily this, but just I'm looking at the item in general for for fine arts. This rubric will cover k through 12 fine arts education, and that's inclusive of everything from dance Dance, music. Music. So out of curiosity, does staff after going through this process believe that any of the publishers have material that covers everything in this rubric for all of those for all those themes? I am concerned because it's such a such a large umbrella of offerings.
Yes. Yes, I have an answer for you. Sorry, not yes, Cynthia. Question. Fine arts like CTE, there have been many times, as you know, from proclamation process where we put out a call for materials and there there's no one picking up the other end of the line, right? That there doesn't yet exist a set of instructional materials or a publisher that feels ready to have materials submitted. And so there are courses right now that do not have approved, even from the prior process, approved instruction materials for teachers to use, and teachers and districts have to come up with their own. I think the case will be true that in this first few years of fine
arts and CTE that there will be gaps, there will be courses where there are no eligible publishers or publishers do not submit, because they either want to take the time to recraft their product to ensure it scores well or because it just it might not be worth it. There's only 40 students in the state enrolled in that course, is it worth it for them to create something, submit it through the MRR process to potentially sell 40 books? So I think there there will be gaps but we won't know until we put out the RFIM, the request for instruction materials for review to see how people are feeling.
I know for, we did have a lot of publisher participation for fine arts, and so there are, there's lots in elementary and middle school that are interested in submitting their products and excited about this year since the last opportunity they have was twelve years ago. So I'm I'm confident that there's gonna be submissions there. I just don't know about maybe some of the more bespoke course credits in high school. Okay. So just a follow-up, and and and this is for my own learning because I'm trying to I'm I'm concerned you may you mentioned earlier that, a lot of these materials are kind of on the run up. Right? There there many districts are kinda scrambling.
And, again, because personally, I like, fine arts is incredibly important, subject area for me. It's also a very large one. And so I'm wondering, part of why I looked lost earlier. I was looking I was scrambling to see if there's any kind of supplemental rubric that we're being presented with for fine arts. And and it I guess you shook your head. No. I was hoping that perhaps we could, if we were in that process, accelerate something in the process, just provide resources for the districts at some point if there was anything in the pipeline. Yes. I think our our approach generally to rubric making was let's get the full subject
version done first and then move on to supplemental or partial subject instruction material rubrics if they exist. And so it's much easier for us to get this one approved and then go build a supplemental product one after that. It won't be in this m recycle 2026, but I think that's something that we need to look at our long term planning. And, so I'll I'll definitely take that, critique and and see what we can do about, the timeline for supplemental products in all subject areas and not just reading and math as we have at the moment. I really appreciate that. And just for one last clarifying question.
So so I don't have to go back and look through the timeline. We're looking what what is the timeline we're thank you so much. Yes. We are we're talking about rubrics now that would be part of Emory cycle 2020 c six, which means that materials would be, reviewed next summer, voted on in November 2026, and then in classrooms for the 2728 school year. And publishers at this point through this process seem like it's it's a feasible thing to do for you know, in this timeline for our districts? For those that already have a product.
If you are starting from zero and deciding to jump into the fine arts, publishing world, I I would not advise you to do so. I think this is the first year of an Emma review is built for products that already exist that need some fine tuning as opposed to those that are starting from scratch. And I think we've seen that be true for, publishers that jumped in in '24 and '25. That's part of our we have publishers respond, and then we kind of get on the phone and counsel each one of them and say, where do you think you are? Let's give you a tester to see if if this is gonna work for you.
Maybe you are a small company, and we would advise doing one or two products instead of your whole product run, but we do try and work with publishers to help them understand that it is an intensive process, and that know, sometimes you can't withdraw as we heard earlier. But I think that will, over time, it will space out and publishers will be able to jump in and create a new product and maybe submit for '27 or '28 or 29 on on this chart. So for those that you're aware of, those that are are willing to go through this process, they they they do have the ability to cover each discipline within what they currently
offer and it's just a matter of tweaking? Correct. There already exist products that cover the tics. Since we haven't revised the ticks, there's products that cover a 100% of the ticks already in existence. I think the things they would need to tweak would be their their approach to quality. Maybe they don't have parent letters, and they would scroll poorly in that section. So that might be something that they need to tweak versus another product who's starting from scratch. Thank you. Member Picker and Higdon. Thank you, mister chairman. Colin, I'm looking at the page 16 on the high frequency words. I know this body is charged with developing a vocabulary list Mhmm.
That will go into the TEKS. So my question I have three questions around this. Number one, when will the publishers have that so they can make sure that they're going to be 100 in TEKS alignment? Because I'm thinking that our TEKS required vocabulary list is going to be high frequency words. And then number two is, who's developing that list? Have y'all issued a contract? Anyone to help develop that list? And if you have, who's the recipient of that contract? I'll answer that. The reason we left it vague on the rubric is because we knew that was coming down the pipeline.
We didn't say these are the words because this body still needs to create those lists. And so I think I can't I'm not on that team, but I can see if someone can get us an update on that for the vocabulary list. I will say that if developed and and approved in time, that would be something that triggers a proclamation because you've revised the TEKS, and then we'd have the decision this body, do we pull everything that's already been reviewed through IMRA off the list and rereview it because we've updated the TEKS? And that's a future Us decision and and probably '28 or '29.
But I'd I'd yes. I think it's a good point that we left we left it to say we need to have those lists of high frequency words. Once the board creates their own list, we'll and put that into the rubric and amend the rubric rubric to reflect it. And right now, this may be a question for chairman or you I'm not sure who's gonna ask this. Right now, when are we looking at, what's the timeline of approving that list and implementation of that list? And then also, I'd like to know if y'all if TEA is already in contract with somebody to develop that list. The timeline, I haven't looked at it recently. It's either next meeting or January and February meeting. I believe to start having discussion about it.
But don't don't hold me to that. I have to go back and review. I wasn't expecting that question, under the MRED twenty twenty six item. Shannon, do you have any information? That's correct, Chair. Tunative, timeline schedule is potentially November and or January. There are some contingencies that would need to be considered, for the selection of literature, that this board is considering right now. In addition, there there has been, to answer your question, mister Pitran, a a contract that was put out a while back to begin the process of,
like, collecting feedback from stakeholders like teachers on literature lists that we're out there right now. And that's that's the extent of the work that's been done. And who was awarded the contract to facilitate that? TNTP. I'm sorry. Who? TNTP. The new teacher project? Yes. Thank you. Any further questions? Member Hickman? Quick follow-up, Colin. I asked who the author was, you said your team. I say you're the regulator. Is all your team regulators? Yes. Does anyone on your team do Bluebonnet development? No, sir. And did anyone involved with Bluebonnet development work work on the rubrics?
On the rubrics, no, sir. Okay. Thank you. Do you have more slides? That concludes my part of the presentation unless there were specific questions about those rubrics. Okay. We have a motion on the floor to approve the rubrics. Is there any discussion about that? Ready to vote? All those in favor please say aye. Aye. All those opposed no. No. The ayes have it. The motion carries. That's it for agenda item number four. Same questions before thirty minute break or keep going? Break. Break. Okay. We're gonna take a thirty minute break. It's, 01:31, so let's come back at 02:00.
That's not thirty minutes. It's only twenty nine. 02:05. 205, please. Question about whether your camera shot shows the baby or not. We saw her. Could be nap time. Yeah. Asleep right now. But as soon as he wakes up, I'll put him on camera. Okay. We're back on item number five now, decision of proposed amendment to 19 TAC chapter 67, state review and approval of instruction materials. Subchapter B, state review and approval, 60 seven-twenty seven, IMRA reviewers eligibility and appointment. It's in your board agenda on page I-fifteen.
Welcome back. Thank you. Colin Dempsey. Thank you, chair. Members, you also have the the this is a discussion item, not a first reading item, but we did wanna bring you, some rule text to react to so that at a future meeting when we do have first reading, we're starting from a similar foundation. Chapter 67.27 is are the rules rather for instructional materials reviewers' eligibility and appointment. The the background here is that as we solidified the MR review process,
this body voted on some some guidelines for how we select quality reviewers and how we select suitability reviewers. After our first MR process, we we refined a bit how we determine the quality reviewers. We found the the issues in that process and and rectified them in rule text. And now I'm coming to you with some points from this particular subsection of rule 60 seven-twenty seven related specifically to subsection E, around the suitability reviewers. So this year as you may recall we asked you to nominate a force rank
list of 20 suitability reviewers, and what we found in that process was we needed a bit more time, and that some members were able to force rank 40 or so suitability reviewers and that the rules as written at the time forced us to go through a two week process with each member to try and figure out who their top 20 were and so we wanted to clarify the timeline there and and allow for us to go back to the bench, if you will, for each member and just say if they had approved,
let's say, 21, that if the nineteenth person dropped out we could go automatically to the twenty first person on the member's force rank list instead of having to wait two weeks. This was especially helpful, or will be especially helpful if in the case we have a reviewer that has to drop from the process maybe forty eight hours before we're about to kick it off, and two weeks does not exist for us to go, work with a member to get someone in place ahead of the training. And so that's the, the general overview of these proposed changes. The other piece here are some minimum percentages for Spanish language speakers in a member's
force ranked list. We ran into an issue where we possibly did not have enough Spanish language speakers nominated by each member. Part of the suitability team building process is that, different members are represented in those teams of three and it ended up where certain members were the only ones with with Spanish speakers who could review Spanish materials, and so we're encouraging through rule text, that members submit folks who have that skill set so that they can review the materials in the native language in which they're written. And then we also built in some insurance in this proposed rule text for when
we get to languages other than English so that we have enough nominated suitability reviewers who can read German when we get to that or whatever other language is included in languages other than English submissions, making sure that we have suitability reviewers that can read in the native language for which the materials are teaching. And so, it's that part about having the right folks who know how to speak the language, including that in the suitability force rank list, and then one about timing for those suitability reviewers and making sure that we have
enough time to backfill a position should someone drop in the review process. And so I won't read them to you, but happy to take questions or hear any concerns about this particular subsection rule that we have in front of us today. Vice Chair Little and then Member Hickman. Colin, I have a question about some of the instructions that were given to the reviewers. You know, as board members, we recommend people and then when they're chosen and I reached out to one of them to ask about what had happened or whatever, what and she was she told me, she said,
I can't talk to you. I signed a a contract saying that I would not talk to anyone. And in there, I think it specifically said a board member. And that puzzled me a little bit because I'm like, well, it seems like we're the ones that should be able to talk to our reviewers. So can you explain that? Yes, ma'am. So that's outlined in not this chapter, but the very next one after it, 06/1929, about the rules around communicating with reviewers during the review. Similar to when we're doing an open contract, that there's a cone of silence if you will and that's
outlined in that 6,729 where it states that reviewers should not be speaking with board members or anyone who has an interest in the review, until their contract has expired. And part of that is protect, the reviewers integrity, so they're not being unduly influenced by one particular board member during the review. And and also to protect the the integrity of the process, that, you know, certain reviewers who might have connections with board members or publishers aren't aren't speaking to them. So that's outlined in in 6729,
which, you know, I'm happy to look at again, but that's that's why that guidance was given to reviewers is because it was in that that rule text. That does not prevent a reviewer like today coming and presenting at an open board meeting where all members are present. And that's specific in that subsection of rule as well. So I think it's meant to not funnel access just to one member, but make sure that all members are present if a reviewer is being addressed while the review is ongoing. After the reviewer's contract is up, yes, they're able to come and speak on their experience and or even do it individually,
but that's how the current rule reads. And so when would that contract be up? November 30. Okay. All right. Thank you. Member Higdon. Thank you. I-eighteen, I think, is where our changes are. Paragraph seven makes sense. Paragraph nine, if we fail to nominate enough or if the timing does not allow for the one week window, what is the one week window? The one week window where we generally go back to I think it's referenced in an earlier part of the the rule text. Is that an eight if the member fails to nominate within one week? Yes.
Okay. So if we had you don't have enough and we haven't given you enough in a week, you can go to other districts. That makes sense. What's the existing pool of applicants? So there there may have been some that weren't yet ranked. So we do have some quality reviewers who end up not being able to serve as quality reviewers and and they do meet the criteria for suitability. So we would we would go back to that pool. Or perhaps there's you know, more Spanish language speakers that we need access or high school math teachers. So going back to the general pool of all members instead of just one member's siloed selected list. Okay.
That makes sense. And three and four is Spanish and then other languages. The the general one and four makes sense to me. I'm not sure why Spanish is treated separately. So why can't the catch all in four be used for Spanish as well? We have a greater need for Spanish because there are dedicated Spanish language teaks. So languages other than English, I didn't want to force a 20% rule for German speaking reviewers when we're reviewing those materials. But we are every year from now on going to be reviewing K through 12 math and Spanish language sorry,
K through six math and Spanish language, K through six reading and Spanish language. And so, we're just making sure that a minimum amount of each member's nominees are Spanish language speakers. So that's why it's called out separately. But if you prefer that we come back on first reading with those combined, I can certainly fix that. Yes. It seems to me that if we're doing Spanish, that would still be captured in four. We have to have at least five Spanish speaking if we're doing Spanish speaking materials. If we're doing French, we need five French speaking. So that's all. Thank you. So in paragraph nine,
if Member Brooks was here, I think she would ask about the delegation of SBOE authority to TA. So I'm curious, if we have other ideas on how to retain that power with the SBOE creative solutions that might be an alternative to that? One alternative would be the member putting some padding in their list and nominating more than the bare minimum. And doing so would ensure that the so let's say the minimum requirement is 20, if a member puts in 30 or 40, then staff has a lot more,
flexibility to go on the next person on your list that you've approved and you've vetted. I think where we ran into most issues is where someone maybe only nominated 15 instead of the full 20 or, only 21. And we, you know, two people drop out. We're we're stuck in a tough place of trying to figure out a member's intent within a forty eight hour turnaround. So I think that's it would be incumbent on a on a board member to submit more as insurance, and that but I think that's that was the spirit of of paragraph nine. But happy to talk through other possibilities.
One idea would be that all members of the State Board of Education serve on a committee. Their committee chair could be responsible for that. And I'm going to have to try to remember exactly what our instructions were, but when we received the our list, did we have a number we were supposed to get to? For suitability reviewers in particular, yes. There are some members that came to us with a list and said I have 20, here's my 20, go find these people. Others, we went through the applications that we received and said here's the starting point if
you don't have a list of 20 names, but we needed to get to 20, yes. And maybe what we just need to do is just that we know we're going to have a certain amount of attrition and maybe we just need to build that into the process and say, well, if you really need 20, we just need to say 25. Correct. And just I would say that way that if we know that that's what we need to do and that we need to build in a certain number, a certain cushion to account for attrition, then I think that would probably be preferable.
Increased that. Yes. Okay. Any further discussion from anyone else? I personally, in my two and a half years here, have seen a lot of I've been here for a lot of conversations for cumulative totals of hours around TA's involvement in the building of work groups and things of that like. So I am going to be interested in, addressing nine in a different way. I'm happy to work with you, Colin, and other members if there's any other interest that hasn't been brought up brought up here so far today and how we can address that.
All right. We'll come back at first reading with that draft. Okay. Agenda item number six for today, Subchapter D, Open Enrollment Charter School Application Process five Year Review. It's in your board agenda on page I dash 20. We have several, public testimony sign up today. So I know it's been it's been several hours since we've gone over those rules. Lenny, if you can review the rules for us whenever you call the testifiers forward. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Kinsey. Public testimony registrants will be called in groups of four.
When your name is called, please occupy the seats marked public testimony registrant. Go back to the same seat when your time to speak is up. If there are no questions from the board, you may go back to your seat and the next four speakers will be called. You have two minutes to speak. The timer in front of you will count down the time and will show three lights, green, yellow, and red. You may begin your testimony when the green light is on. The yellow light lets you know you have thirty seconds to wrap up. Please end your testimony when the red light comes on.
You will also hear a beep, and that means your time is up. If you have copies of your testimony, please provide them to SBOE staff when you are about to speak. Supporters of testifiers may not gather behind the podium. Just as a reminder, the board's operating rules state that no posters, props, flags, noisemakers, or other visual displays are allowed. I will call on the first four. Maggie Stern, Crystal Rios, Myra Carrier, and Kelsey Kling. Magister? Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the charter school application review process on
behalf of Our Schools, Our Democracy, a Texas based nonpartisan nonprofit established to address the impact of unlimited charter school expansion. When this board met in June, Commissioner Morath commented that TEA's filter for recommending new charters is, quote, is this gonna be an A or a B campus when it runs? It's got to be good, period, end quote. As you'll see from the charts I've provided, the track record over the last decade is alarmingly clear. More than half of the charters approved 2013 to 2023 were D or F rated in 2025 alone. These newer charter schools earned 59% Ds and Fs over the last three years of
ratings. 10 of these 39 charters have already closed an inefficient use of taxpayer resources that more importantly has led to disruption and instability for thousands of Texas students and families. Given the poor record of charters that the commissioner has recommended to the state board for approval under the current process, we urge TEA to expand the review in order to provide this board with the necessary information to make informed decisions. It's critical that the TEA review and the information provided to the SBOE verify claims made in the application and include important information about an applicant that is often publicly
available, such as financial records, annual audits, charter authorizer annual reports, and press stories about the charter and its founders. This expanded review is especially needed as more out of state entities are likely to apply through the high performing entity process. DEA should also monitor charters more closely after approval to ensure they live up to the promises made in their applications. The SPOE approves applicants based on need and rationale outlined in the application. When charters fail to live up to these commitments, such as enrolling fewer economically disadvantaged students than projected, they are not meeting these promises made to the board or to Texas families.
We urge TEA to expand the review process to prevent the alarming trends of poor ratings and closures among new charter campuses. Students and families deserve that level of transparency, accountability, and quality education. Thank you. Crystal Rios. Good afternoon, chairman and members of SVOE. My name is Crystal Rios, and I serve as director of SVOE engagement at TBCSA. Public charter schools are held to high standards in Texas and rightfully so. If schools aren't performing at the level families deserve, we must address that directly.
At the same time, these last five years have brought unprecedented challenges. The pandemic fueled learning loss, rising construction costs and teacher attrition. Accountability standards shifted, while stagnant funding deepened facilities funding gaps. Launching a new school is among the hardest jobs in education. Even after TEA's rigorous approval process, leaders must build teams, earn trust and meet high expectations. Smaller enrollment isn't always a red flag. What matters is financial viability,
and that's confirmed through Charter First ratings. We do aspire for all schools to be A or B rated and have identified the need for intervention. Here's what TPCSA is doing. First, we ensured that Fresh Start charter schools could access funding as part of HB2. And second, we launched multi year support program for Fresh Start schools. Beginning with year zero planning for twenty five-twenty six school year, we've now expanded to add year one coaching. Leaders and boards are guided through more than 600 critical milestones,
resources that did not exist before. We're still years away from full outcome data, but today we wanted to share voices of leaders benefiting from this support. Their letters are included in my handout as they are rightfully focused on the hard work of opening their campuses at their campus. We believe in A through F accountability and giving families options. With 74,000 students on waitlist, the demand is clear. Ms. Frias? Your time is up. Myra Carrier. Good afternoon,
Chairman and members of the State Board of Education. My name is Maire Alejandra Carrier, and I'm the proud parent at PROMESA Charter School in San Antonio. I'm here today to share my story and express my strong support for public charter schools and the choices they provide for families like mine. My son is currently a fourth grader at PROMESA. When he started school in our local district, we quickly realized that it wasn't the right fit. He's bright and curious, but he wasn't receiving the individualized attention that he needed in a large classroom setting. He began to lose confidence. As a parent,
it was heartbreaking to see a child who once loved learning start feeling like school wasn't for him. Since enrolling, the difference has been night and day. My fourth grader has rediscovered his excitement for learning. The teachers at PROMESA know him by name, understand his needs and push him to reach his full potential while supporting his mental health. One of the unique programs that makes PROMESA stand out is its Tiniest Forest project, a green space on campus designed as a living classroom. Students care for the trees, learn about ecosystems, and see firsthand the importance of environmental stewardship.
For my son, it has been more than just a science class. It has given him hands on experience and a sense of responsibility for the world around him. He is also currently enrolled in a peer mediator elective led jointly by his school in the Bexar County in Bexar County where students receive certification to help mediate conflicts among their peers. For a fourth grader, this is an incredible opportunity to build leadership, empathy, and problem solving skills that will last him a lifetime. As we experience, no single school model can meet the needs of every student.
Having access to public charter school prevented our son from falling through the cracks. I respectfully urge you to continue supporting public charter schools. All families deserve the same opportunity we had to ensure that their children thrive. Thank you. Kelsey Kling. Good afternoon, members. My name is Kelsey Klingham with the American Federation of Teachers Texas. And the focus of my testimony today is on criteria that is built into the agency's application related to the review and approval of charter schools.
First, we'd like to thank the Board for taking up this very important item. We think it's wonderful. The Generation 30 application did not require a public meeting for the charter applicants. The Generation 30 application does require one information session, But it's not clear how the operator or the applicant will describe how to ensure that the public knows about this meeting. A public meeting isn't public if no one really knows about it. And so we would ask that the agency clarify to applicants how they plan to diffuse the knowledge about their public meeting to ensure the public has an opportunity to
engage with the applicant and make sure that it's important and relevant to their community. In June 2025, this board named lack of community support and engagement as one of the reasons for choosing to reject the Volinta Academy application. We would stress that community support is essential part of success of any public school. And so removing that requirement is concerning. Second, we want to ask the agency to clarify the geographic boundaries of the application. In the Generation 31 application, it's not clear if the operator will be bound by those inputs.
An operator could base their application to and presentation to the agency and this board based on a certain community neighborhood and those schools. But then that operator could open in an unrelated location. We just want to make sure that there is not a bait and switch that happens where you're presented with information and that operator actually opens in a different community serving different students. Third, want to request that the agency restore the section of the application identified related to facilities. Okay. Members, do you have questions for this panel?
Member Hall? Ms. Rios, would you like to finish your testimony? I definitely thought that was the morning. It's short. Let's see. So we believe in a through f accountability and in giving families options. With 74,000 students on wait list, the demand is clear. Our goal is simple, successful school launches, strong academic outcomes, and more Texas students and great public charter schools. Thank you. Thank you, Member Hall. Member Hickman? I have a question for Ms. Rios and Ms. Stern,
and I'll ask it. So Ms. Stern, you gave a list of schools with bad ratings and some good ratings. So we've I think we all agree there's charter schools with A ratings, charter schools with F ratings and everything in between. Our only opportunity and and what I was interested in this item for today is we only get the application, the capacity interview. It's kind of like a venture capital. We're investing in a start up. Are there any criteria, themes, things you would pick up on for schools that are likely to be failing that
we should pay better attention to? Or the the same question, miss Rios, you gave us a list of schools with A and B ratings. Is there anything at the application stage that would indicate this school's gonna be an A rated school? So it that's what I'm interested in today. It's not pro charter, anti charter, more charters or less charters. It's we need to do a better job of looking through the applications, interviewing, talking to applicants, and approving schools that are going to do well and rejecting schools that are going to do poorly. So I'll just stop there and let you start,
Miss Stern. Yeah. Thank you. So I haven't had the opportunity to go back and review all of the, interviews for each of these, charters. So just to speak broadly to some, you know, ideas and themes that that might arise, One is charter saturation. So when we see that there are a number of charter schools that have popped up in the same area, that are consistently having the same results for students, that might be an indication that, there needs to be, you know, further questions asked about, what education is is being provided.
Another thing I would say is, preparation of the charter leaders. There are, programs that I think we talked about during the June meeting such as the BES fellowship where there have been a number of, proposed charter and superintendents who have gone through that program. And what we have found consistently is that those schools, opened by those fellows tend to have lower ratings. Those are a couple things that that come to mind, but I'm happy to to give a further look of of some of these schools. But those are kind of the first two is the the preparation of the leader, and looking at charter saturation in the the neighborhoods.
Okay. Miss Rios, did you have anything to add? I would just say no, that there is no like one thing. I know something that sometimes gets asked is do you have any like what funding do you have coming in, right? So we've seen schools that have an enormous amount of funding coming in that don't end up doing very well. And then we have schools that kind of struggle with building that funding and then end up doing really well. So I just think, like, all of the topics are kind of that way, and so there's not just one thing. We would put I mean, we put our trust in TEA and the commissioner and you guys to make those
good decisions. And I guess my answer is no, there is no one thing. Yes. I'm just wanting to be sure we're looking at the right things and trying to make our decision when we get to a June meeting. So that's what I was hoping to do today. Thank you. This is the chair. Mr. Rivas, Van Maynard. Yes. For Mr. Kling. Yes, sir. Yes. Would you like to finish your statement, please? Yes. Thank you so much. Just very, very briefly, one of the things that we wanted to see return to the charter application was what their plan for their instructional facility was. Formerly the application asked if they plan to own or lease a property.
We know that that's a major investment of our taxpayer dollars is in the funding for the facilities of these operations. And we want to make sure that those are invested wisely, especially now that the formula funding for these charter campuses has been significantly increased by the 89 legislature. The one other thing I would factor and it's not in the application now, but we would love to have the agency clarify. And HB six was a major Student discipline bill that passed this past session. And we read in that bill that there is an expanded opportunity for these applicants to
exclude students' enrollment based on their disciplinary history. And we would like the agency to clarify whether or not that's going to be considered as part of GEN 31 and how that might impact the application going forward. Thank you. Thank you. Member Mayer? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I could, Crystal? You represent the Charter School Association? You do. Okay. So would it be fair to say that you that your association has a vested interest in the success of new charters? Yes. We do. I mean, yeah. Our mission is all students have quality public school options.
Okay. And let me just kind of tell you where I'm coming from is that I spent seventeen years. I was executive director at the FFA Association. I spent a lot of time chartering new FFA chapters and some of them failed. And one of the things we did is we spent a lot of time trying to figure out why they failed and then figure out how we could better support them and have better success rates, okay. And so I'll give you an example is that one new charter that I was familiar with and I just and it was part
of a national network and I just one day just picked up the phone and called the gentleman that was tied to that national network and said, well, how is that campus in Texas doing? They said, well, it's a real struggle. And part of that struggle was is is that when a when a charter school is part of a, of a national organization, There's a in Texas we want them to be freestanding and not necessarily as much tied to that national organization but the way that that was being interpreted is is
that the national organization would have been able to help them with some economies of scale such as things as payroll and some things like that. And I was told that they were not allowed to do that because they had to be freestanding. And that was a really big, big obstacle. And so I guess my question to you is that, well, do we have any systemic issues that are that become barriers for charter schools, new charters, new operators to succeed? Because I think that part of what we part of this process and part of
this thought process is that what we want them to succeed because when they don't succeed it's not good for anybody. And this might be a homework assignment, but maybe you could kind of give a quick response. But what can you tell us and what does the association what can you tell us about new charters that struggle? And is there anything on a policy level even on a legislative level that might be done to help alleviate those struggles? Thank you for asking that. And we've had that conversation. So thank you for circling back to that.
I would say that was kind of the hopefully the bones of my testimony is that we have been taking a look at that. And so to answer the latter of your question, we worked really hard during legislative session to make sure that new charters were able to access facilities funding under HB2. Previously, they were not because they did not have an A through F rating. So that's one piece of what we recently worked to. The other is seeking funding and starting this post authorization work.
This was not inside the scope of what we did more than two years ago. This is new. We realized that these new fresh start charter schools, needed some of those supports and things like facility acquisition, finding appropriate vendors, things that you name, the conversations that we've had, we listened. And so we are in the works of putting this program together. As of this year, year zero, planning year, there's a cohort and year one startup. The the folks that opened their doors, like, three weeks ago,
they're also receiving coaching, not just the school leaders, but their boards in terms of board governance also. So we are hopeful that we are providing intervention, but I just don't have the data for you yet. Alright. Thank you. Mhmm. Member Charles. Hello. This question is for you, but I think, you can answer the question as well. What are some things that you're hearing from the leaders that makes it just so hard to operate a charter school the first five years? Because you opened your testimony by saying it's so hard. Yeah. Thank you for asking that. And while I will answer,
what I what I know is what I hear from the leaders. Right? And that's why I wanted to provide you their letters. They don't wanna pull them away from their schools and ask them to testify, but I think you'll see if you read through the letters, facilities, facilities acquisition, getting through red tape, just getting those doors open is not a fast process. And so that is a piece of it. Another piece is sometimes what just takes time is building that trust. You can have parents and families who love the school, were part of the planning process,
are ready to, you know, jump in. But when you don't have a building yet or you don't have a school running, it's a little bit, you know, scary and nerve wracking to say, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna pull them. They might they might wanna wait and rightfully so. Right? Their parents say love your school, but they love their babies more. So they wanna wait a year or two and see kind of what's happening before they jump in. So building that community trust. And then I think I I kinda mentioned it in my testimony, but, we all know teacher attrition is an issue. And so I think building staff sometimes just takes time too.
Anything you're hearing regarding, like, the academic piece, like, the actual instruction itself is making it difficult for them to reach higher ratings? I don't know that I personally heard anything, although I don't work in membership services. So, I'd love to follow-up with you. And I'm sure that we do hear things, just not me with my own ears. Okay. I guess this last question will be for you. Thank you for sharing this document. It seems like by 2020, none of these schools were, like, making a's or b's that you listed here. Do you think that this is on brand with traditional ISDs too where there was,
like, a downward trend in accountability statewide, or is this just salient to charters? I think some of the pressures that were, that Ms. Rayos mentioned earlier are certainly affecting, all types of schools, including, district schools as well as charter schools. What's salient about this data in particular for charters is that it represents a divestment of resources from the traditional district system that has been being sent to campusescharter campuses that in recent years have overwhelmingly not had the academic or financial performance results that
TIGAY is looking for. And so that's, you know, an incredibly inefficient use of resources. Right? The other thing I would say just to and I think this connects back to Member Hickman's question earlier. One thing that we're seeing, specifically in charters that I think might be connected to, some of these, academic performance results that we're seeing is that there's an incredibly high rate of uncertified teachers in charter schools. Charters, of course, don't have the same requirements as districts do regarding certified teachers, and the data overwhelmingly shows that certified teachers is one of the best predictors of academic performance.
So that would be another thing perhaps for TEA to monitor. That's something, you know, charters will often talk about in their applications. It's hard to project ahead of time. It's something that really needs to be followed up on to see, if this campus is actually meeting those projections. And if not, if there's, to remainers point up, a barrier there that needs to be addressed legislatively or at the the campus level. Okay. Because if I'm a parent, right, if the traditional ISDs in the area are scoring d's and f's, if I see the charter schools in the area and they're probably comparable, what am I to do? What am I where am I supposed to send my student?
You know? Yeah. A lot of families are experiencing the result of underinvestment in schools that have often led to low performance results. That's a real question for families. And again, I would say that it goes down to it comes back to a question of where we're spending our resources. Is it, you know, taking them away from the district system that is continuing to serve to serve a majority of our students? A majority of parents are continuing to choose that traditional district system. Is that the most efficient use of the resources that the state can provide to public education?
Okay. Member Hall? You have a question for Ms. Stern. So you said that, money is being taken away from ISDs. And I'm just wondering, are you saying that that money is coming out of the budget for the traditional ISD and going towards charters? Or are the money that's going towards charters is added beyond that? Well, for example, when a a student leaves a district school to go to a charter, right, the the revenue loss associated with that isn't one to one for the district in terms of what they still have to continue to pay for, when, you know, a a small number of students leave.
If that answers your question. And what happens to a, charter school who fills multiple years in a row? If they are they have three apps in a row, they're required to close, which is incredibly disruptive to families and students. Okay. And so there's already a check-in place basically for them? Absolutely. But we don't want to wait until, you know, a three year check-in if there's, metrics we can put in on the front end to try and prevent that happening, for students for three years in a row. Would a ISD close if it failed three years in a row? No. There are other accountability metrics where, of course, TEA could take over a district if,
charter if a campus is is failing. So those standards do exist in district. The council is a lot lighter then. Okay. Thank you. Any further questions for this panel? Thank you so much. Jean Mayer and James Halmike. James Halick? Correct. Stan, if you can reset his timer, please. Oh, okay. You ready? Yes. Howdy. My name is, James Holomeck with the Texas State Teachers Association. I've provided this hangout that outlines some of the projected versus actual enrollments of recently approved charter schools.
It has the projected enrollment as well as the actual enrollment as of the twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five school years. As outlined in the chart, the majority of recent charter approvals have experienced underenrollments compared to their enrollment projections outlined in their public approval application. Of the new charters approved since 2017, 23 of the 24 active charters approved have not met enrollment projections in their original charter applications, and 65% of the active charters are under enrolled by more than 50%.
These schools have not been able to enroll students at the projected rate, which could indicate that they are in regions where schools they're in regions where the schools do not have the capacity for a charter in the neighborhood. Taxpayer funds may have been used to set up and maintain these charters that might not satisfy a need in the area in which they preside in. This under enrollment trend begs the need for the charter approval process to include an in-depth capacity review of the regions and neighborhoods the charters are applying to be located
in. We issue the TEA to have a more in-depth review of school district and charter saturation of neighborhoods and determine the regions if they have capacity to support if additional charter schools. This review should include demographic and enrollment trends of the school neighborhood school districts as well as already established charter schools. They should also evaluate how a shift to private schooling and homeschooling, supported by the new ESA program, will affect the additional demand for charters in the region. Okay. Any questions for the test fire?
Thank you so much, sir. At At this time, I'd like to call up Marion Shetty from the agency. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, members. My name is Marion Shetty. I'm the deputy associate commissioner of the Department of Authorizing and Policy at the agency. And here to give you a presentation around, the Charter application process and a five year review, at the request of member Hickman. So just want to cover the request and a little bit of background before we get into the data. So the request was a presentation about the last five cycles of the charter application process, whether or not schools opened on time or delayed for any reason,
enrollment data compared to enrollment projections from the application, performance data for each school compared to their closest ISD neighborhood schools, and any trends that staff could share regarding, successful charter school launch. And so first and foremost, just wanna ground us in the statute. So the agency is charged with implementing, Texas Education Code chapter 12, which establishes that the purpose of charter schools, establishes these five in statute to improve student learning, increase the choice of learning opportunities within the public school system, create professional opportunities that will attract new teachers to the public school system,
establish a new form of accountability for public schools, and encourage different and innovative learning methods. That section also gives direction that the chapter may not be applied in a manner that unduly regulates the instructional methods or pedagogical innovations of charter schools. And so what you see often in our application process is us aligning, the application to meet these purposes, as well as giving the schools the autonomy to design and implement these models. So, the code and the statute also outline that the commissioner must establish an application process,
and to establish criteria for that process, and to approve or deny applications based on the following things. So documented evidence collected through the application review process, merit of the applicants, and then other criteria that the commissioner may adopt through rule and through the application process. So we have a long list of criteria, that is part of our application process that we use to evaluate each applicant across a variety of areas from instructional materials to facilities to community need and demand. So we look at a number of factors and making sure that there is a
holistic alignment of the design of the model that our applicants are proposing. And so from that charge, we have established our standard application process. We think of that application, as a funnel. You all have seen this before, the commissioner's presentation that he gives each year in June before the, SBOE makes their determinations. But all applications enter into that funnel into the process. We review them against a minimum standard for eligibility and completeness. We then move them forward to an external review process. So all applications are reviewed by a panel of external experts and charter school authorizing,
variety of folks from, existing charter school leaders, other charter school authorizers. Our we have education service in our staff that are on those, external reviewers. And those applications must score at least 85% of available points in order to advance. So once those applications, have kind of finished through the review process, then the agency does a cross functional, review of them internally as well. So, we bring together a multi team group from folks from our finance team to our legal team, to our special populations team,
to all gather, participate, review applications, and then generate questions for the capacity interview. So, the next phase is that capacity interview. The staff asks those questions of the applicants. We also invite SBOE members to participate in that portion of the application process. And then based on the, merits of the application as well of the capacity interview, the commissioner makes a proposal to grant schools. The state board of education has the authority and statute to veto or take no action on those charter recommendations. And then once those schools have made it through that portion of the process,
we then enter into the contingency period for any, issues that schools need to remediate, before that they can be granted a charter contract. So then we execute a contract, and then schools enter into what we call our their planning year or often you'll often hear referred to as year zero. So over the last 10 cycles, Texas has approved, 14% of applicants who have, applied to the agency, in order to establish a subchapter D charter school. And nationally, when you compare,
TEA in Texas to other large authorizers, we have a very rigorous bar. So when you look at similar large authorizers, they typically on average approve about 35% of their new applications. And we're coming in well under that. We, also receive a much larger number of applications each year than a number of those large authorizers as well. So, I'm gonna transition into looking at, the five year review. So, we're gonna spend time looking at generations '25 through '29. And so when we look at those application process results,
over those five cycles, we received a 123 applications. 90 of those went to external review. 46 of those then went to the capacity interview. They met that 85% threshold. 30 of those are recommended. And then we ended up with 17 non vetoed charters out of that group. So that group of five on average or that group of five generations, still met that 14% over time as well. So one of the questions, was around, launch timing. And so we look and broke this down, for each of the years,
the application years. So how many of the schools launched on time, kind of, they took that planning year and then they launched in the following year? How many launched, at least one year late or will launch one year late? How many launched more than one year late? And then how many have never opened? So, in that cycle. So, 65% of these schools opened on time. 30% opened after one or two year delay, and a 100% of the launch delays related here were due to facility acquisition issues, or construction, delays due to COVID nineteen. So we saw the the pandemic greatly affect,
and I think you'll see that in that row of, generation 25. Those were schools that in 2020, in the 2020 up until the 2021 and into that summer, we're planning to launch, and had some significant issues either in kind of construction delays for their facilities, due to, challenges from the pandemic. And also, at that time, property rates also, grew as well. And so schools that had identified certain facilities then had to find new facilities that were no longer within the realms of their budgets. So, one of the things in order to kind of look at this in perspective is
how do we and what can we compare this to? And is this standard? So, went back and looked at the previous five years before that the last five years. And so if we look at generations 20 through 24, 85% of those schools opened on time, 15% opened after a one year delay. But that same issue, is what caused the delay for those three schools. So facility acquisition issues, just create difficulties. And so if a school does not have a location in order to go into, the schools have obviously delayed a year,
which is at the discretion of the commissioner, and then opens up in the following year. So this slide looks at for generations 25, so the last five years, of the schools that have opened or will launch soon, looks at their year one enrollment projection, their year one enrollment, the percent of that target that was met. And then we also included for schools that have been open, since then over a period of time. We've also included their 24, 25 enrollment as well. The academic rating is there and then we've also added the financial rating.
So all of the schools get a rating on Charter First as well as the 24, 25 rating of the nearest ISD school. And so one thing I will note is around the enrollment percentage and the projection there. So roughly, the average kind of enrollment percentage is just a little over 50%, of hitting that enrollment target in that first year. And we also see varying reasons why schools are, you know, achieving that target. Sometimes it's due to a facility that doesn't meet the the and allows them to grow. Sometimes schools are making that decision for themselves,
to not fully grow until their performance gets better as well. And then that same kind of comparison to that previous group. So generation 20 generations 20 to 24. So you see, a little bit of a higher percentage of those schools meeting their enrollment target in that first year. So that on average, that percentage is around 59%. And then you see varying schools growing over time, as well as performance. So, I think the the question has come up around trends and what has had an impact on success. I think first and foremost, what our application process is designed to do is making sure that there is a
thoughtful, detailed, well researched model that they are proposing to execute. And first and foremost, what leads to success of schools is high quality instruction and high quality teaching. And so one of the key factors that we see in that is that we have the school leader who has specific experience executing that model or has, in the same grade level of students as well too. So, our practice has been to ensure that when we recommend, a school, that there is an identified superintendent, as part of that application process,
and that those, that those schools and those leaders have leadership experience. We also see that an involved and study board is key, to making sure that the schools are staying on track as well. And so having boards that know and understand their roles and responsibilities are really important. We've seen several boards take action to make adjustments related to finances and also to leadership when necessary in order to drive, student outcomes. Also, I think the question has come up with, additional funding. And so it's extremely helpful.
It is not a one to one guarantee of success. So we have examples of schools doing both, having additional funding and doing poorly. We also have schools that have really adjusted down and really focused on what's happening day to day in the classroom with limited revenue. So I think regardless, there is an amount of funding that we believe is necessary in order to have strong launch up and start. And so the agency actually through, our federal charter schools program grant from the US Department of Education, each new school that launches receives $900,000
of startup funding. There are very specific rules that they can use those dollars for that are outlined by the US Department of Education. And so we have built that into our application process so that if you make it through that the rigorous bar, you receive those dollars in order to support the startup and launch of the school. We also have a number of other supports and authorizing actions, that the agency, leads into. So I would say first and foremost, we look and the performance of the applicants every year. We have goals set around making sure that they launch as a or b rated
schools. That is our goal as well. And so one of the things that we do is consistently look at the application process and how can we revise that. How can we make sure that not only the process is clear, but that also the application document is as clear as possible too. So, one of the things that we require applicants to do is participate in mandatory information sessions, both about the requirements for Texas charter schools here in the state, but also about details about the application process and how to make sure to use the application documents.
First and foremost, one of the things that we always come back to in those conversations is please make sure that you are grounding your model and your design in the criteria that we are looking for, and making sure that they are planning and designing to meet community need with their model, but also making sure that they are going to achieve academic success. We also provide optional support seminars for applicants. They cover a variety of topics to provide information as applicants draft their proposals, high quality instructional materials, charter school finance, special populations.
And then we also hold monthly office hours, about the application process as well too. So each year, we refine the application. We also put out a call for, information, and, believe in the tyranny of the good idea. So we wanna make sure that the application is as strong as it possibly can be. And so we reach out to a variety of stakeholders for their feedback. So this past year, going into generation 31, we streamlined criteria and questions. We are revising our criteria language, as much as possible to reduce variability and reviewer interpretation of that external review.
We've also revised questions each year to focus on coherence to the design school model and how that model is going to achieve outcomes for students. We always make sure that we're aligning to legislation as well, and alignment with TEA initiatives. So, we revised the HQIM section this year to align with the IMRA approval, so that when applicants are including their materials, they can indicate whether or not they've chosen something off of the list. And then we also made sure to align it with changes to reflect from the eighty ninth legislative session.
We also, every year, make sure that we revise the financial plan workbook, and we've done that as such to align with the changes from h b two. This year, in alignment with, senate bill five sixty nine, we've added a virtual and hybrid school addendum. And and then we've also made edits to our high performing entities application as well. So this year, we are also starting a a strong charter school launch program. We are utilizing technical assistance funding from TEA's charter schools program grant. So, this is federal funding that is specifically used for this.
And so, in year zero or that planning year, we have authorizing requirements and then we also have supports. So the schools are required to attend monthly calls with the agency. They are required to complete a preopening checklist of required activities. And this year will be the first year that we are going to require them to enroll a specific number of students by a set date in order to open. Support. So we also want to make sure that they are going to have launch year coaching throughout this year zero and this planning year. We are providing them access to supports related to school enrollment and then also related
to facilities identification and acquisition as well. In year one, in the launch year, for our schools that are have launched this past year, they will as part of our authorizing requirements and something that has been standard process for many, many years, we do a first year school site visit with very specific protocols of what we're looking for. These involve classroom visits, meeting with leadership, so staff and the superintendent. We meet with teachers. We meet with parents, to make sure and we do that in September and October of each, school that's opening for the first time.
We also do a cross functional set of, visits with schools that are aimed from a support mechanism, that are also designed to catch any issues that we see very quickly in new schools. So this involves, everyone's favorite team support assistance, special education supports, as well as bilingual education supports. And then our school finance team also comes in and has conversations with them as well. And then on the support side as part of the strong charter school launch program for this year, we are going to be, the schools will receive multiple school quality reviews focusing on instruction and what's happening in
the classrooms. We'll also provide in person coaching and support focus on academics, talent, and operations. And then also what we see is a critical friend that's needed for decision making. So we have seen schools make some decisions related to finances and funding and facilities. And so bringing some experts into that to help with provide kind of a critical friend decision making process as they are taking on the myriad of decisions that are put in front of them in that first year of operation. Also, the agency. So, I would say that since charter schools are exist to encourage innovation,
we run the application process and we try to mitigate for this as much as possible. But with they also have stricter performance requirements if they aren't successful. So charter schools are subject to three strikes law. So if they fail either academically or financially or a combination of those two, they're required to be closed in those three years. We also have a charter school performance framework that we release that has a number of indicators that are academic, financial, and operational, And we release that on our website. We'll be we're looking forward to doing that again now that we have the ability
to do so with accountability ratings. And then we also have non renewal. So every initial school receives an initial five year contract. In order to be renewed, they have to meet performance bars in both academics and finances. And then after that, every ten years. And so we evaluate each year through the application process. We evaluate or excuse me, through the renewal process. We have schools that come up every year. We're evaluating their performance and whether or not they meet the bar to continue operation, even if they haven't met the three strikes requirement yet. So I think one component to think about is what impact does this have on
the charter school portfolio as a whole. And so new school launch, the statute gives mechanisms for new charter schools. One is through, the new school process and the other is through replication. And so the replication process actually is set by standards set in administrative code. We have a bar for approval there, in order to those grow those. And so the the goal of the new school launch process is right identifying those new schools. And then the replication process is to permit organizations who have demonstrated success to be
able to grow. When we look at the past five years and the growth of the portfolio, the majority of that growth has actually come from the existing school replication and not the new school process. So 7% of the growth to the portfolio over the past five years of that growth has come from new schools. And that actually only equates to 1.5% of the charter enrollment from last year. And then when we look at the growth of that has happened over the past five years, actually, 94% of that has come from the replication of successful schools.
And so that that growth represents 22% of the portfolio. And I think overall, the performance of schools has improved over time. And so while we are continuously revising our application process to make sure that we want those schools to launch as as strongly as possible and from day one. Right? And that is our goal with the process. The the health of the sector. Right? So we have around 85% of schools, meeting that a, b, or c bar currently, and we actually saw an improvement from this year to last year,
with the sector cutting the number of f campuses almost in half. And so we are looking forward to this trend continuing, and making sure that the application process is part of that trend as well. Member Brooks. Thank you, mister chair. Thank you for your presentation. This is is very helpful. I I think the report is is incomplete though. I would love to see the process from, when it first started until now. You know? But and I I know that you mentioned at the end here, growth. Growth is at the expense of community schools closing.
So I just I need the public to understand that that's what that looks like. And also, in addition, I looked at some nationwide studies on charter schools. And these are the same numbers that happen across the state, where about 50% of the charter schools close within five years after opening. So it's a nationwide trend. And I don't know if it's because of a building situation, but we kind of see similar apples to apples when we're looking at the results, the outcomes on the NASH or the state exam.
So a couple of questions from the report. For this, on page eight, it says 36 approved charter schools. This was the last ten years. So over all the charter schools that were approved, I think it's really easy to see that 36 turns into hundreds kind of quickly because of the five year expansion. And also something that I wanted to see if we could do was the accelerate, the high quality charter schools. I noticed that there was not an impact report that was submitted for that. Is there a way that you can incorporate that?
Because I think that's an important aspect. And for impact reports, can that automatically be sent to the SVOE instead of us asking for that report? So this is the report that district superintendents are able to pull together that show the kind of impact that a charter school in their district would have on their their finances and and just, more information. I think that's valuable information. There's always two sides, right? And I think it's just important to give us a transparent view of both sides.
And then, so I think the other information, I would love to see the other information sent here. As far as the ratings, I think the spirit of innovation, I understand that. But we're expecting something excellent out of this process. Right? We're expecting something that we're not getting from a public school. I don't see the differences. So that is my concern. And, and again, thank you for this information. That's really helpful for the board. Thank you. Member Childs. Good afternoon.
Thank you for the presentation. We've talked a little bit about what happens with the TEA and the charter schools during the zero to five process. But I was wondering if you can elaborate on that. Because we hear a lot about the application process, gearing up to apply, and then we hear a lot about when the schools are about to close. What happens between the agency and the schools in between those two periods of time In terms of assistance you give, any oversight you may give to the schools Yeah. Through that five year process? So I'm happy to do that, but I also wanna make sure I try to state of the item that we're posted for. So, we conduct a first year visit.
So we go and we visit those schools, we give them a report that comes out of that visit with recommendations and requirements, for improvement as part of that. And then ultimately we review their outcomes every year. So we are assessing the schools and where they stand towards the metrics, right? The three strikes. We also assess and give them HR school performance framework grading that puts them in a tier as well. And then based on that tier, those schools are allowed to then participate in certain parts of the process. We have standards that we require as part of that.
Then so we're evaluating that each year. We are sharing that information with them each year as well. So we are giving them essentially an authorizing summary sheet that says this is where you stand towards all of the components in which we're assessing you on. And then when time comes for renewal, then we're going through our renewal process. The renewal process begins in that last year of the contract. It involves an application where they have to demonstrate to us what is your plan to either maintain your A or B rating or what is your plan to get
there? That's part of that. We then depending on performance, excuse me, depending on performance of those schools, at the renewal process, we then conduct site visits as part of that. And then we go through a recommendation process as well for that too. So we are annually evaluating their performance, and having conversations with schools. The schools also are part of the school improvement interventions as well too, at both at the campus level. And so there are those requirements. So if a school is not doing well, they also have to follow the same tip and tap requirements that traditional ISDs do
as well. Okay. I'll come back for the rest of the question. Okay. Member Maynard. In the process when you have an applicant come and they give you an enrollment projection, how do you verify that? Is there some metric that or is that anytime that you come up with a business plan and essentially that they're coming to you with a business plan. And that business plan has there's kind of a critical mass you have to get to to make that business plan work and because you have a certain amount of fixed cost and then you know and I hate to say this but you're spreading
over a certain number of units, you know, okay, and that's you know, I hate to think of our students as units, but you know, that's kind of you know in a business plan that's kind of what you're thinking about. And the reality is that a lot of times is that if that school does not get to a certain critical mass it becomes a lot more difficult to deliver certain things at a certain level because it affects your staffing, it affects services, it affects lots of things. Yeah. Okay. And I think that there's kind of two things I want to get to is
is that okay so if they come in this is that we think that we can have you know this many students in year one. But where does that number come from and where should it come from? And the other thing about that too is that what is sort of the interplay between new charter authorization and expansion because sometimes is that we have expansion of existing charter schools into an area that we don't even know about. And so that is not really part of the equation. We don't necessarily know that. And so
can you tell us a little bit about just about the numbers because when you look at the numbers here is that we have a lot of charter schools that really underperform what their projections are now. Some of those projections I see some of the projections because a lot of people don't realize is that how schools are funded in the first place is based on a projection. That's how the projection is just a normal thing and they're always going to shoot a little bit high because that's how your funding is done and then you settle up at the end of the year.
Now we get that. But I mean, but just in terms of that first year we see a lot of charter schools that they've got really big numbers and their success and their business plan is sort of predicated on those numbers but then they're having trouble reaching those numbers. Is there a methodology that we ought to be thinking about that to help us verify that? So I would say that there's not a specific methodology, but it is a question that is I think we asked every single applicant in the capacity interview process this year was around their enrollment targets,
their projections, and then what their contingency plans were as well too. So I think it depends on a number of things. It depends on how many grade levels you plan to offer and serve. It depends on how many sections of class that you're going to have, what your model looks like. And so it's really based on and we try to assess that based on the applicant demand, the area that they're opening. And it is something that we question with, I think a decent amount of rigor as part of the application process. This year for every applicant who was recommended and non vetoed, we required them to submit a contingency budget as part of the contingencies process.
And so making sure that they were planned as prepared as possible is why we've also included in the strong charter school launch program enrollment supports as well. And we also wanna see what is in their startup plan for that robustness in order to be able to estimate that. And then I just wanna add one clarification related to the expansion process. We know about that it's an application process that all of the schools, if they wanna expand, have to ask the agency for. And even there is a provision for expedited expansion in the application or in the
statute. And even then those charter schools have to come to the agency and let us know that they're doing that. Yes. I mean, I get that, but we don't necessarily know it. We don't I mean, in our process is that we can sometimes look at a heat map and say these are the existing charter schools, but we don't know if there's a proposed expansion in that area. We don't ever get that information. Yes. So that is so we have in your data sheet that we've included each year and that as part of the application process include the schools in the area, as well as all of the impact statements as well.
So we proactively try to provide that information as part of the application process. Ultimately, we could potentially add into those data sheets if that is something that the SBOE would like, any proposed area. But sometimes there is variability on that of where or not whether or not the school is going to be able to open in that area or not. Yeah. And it just seems like to me that if somebody and those of us who have done business plans and you go to a banker and you're going to try to to you believe in your plan and sometimes is that you're going to try to make
those numbers work. I think that's kind of what you look at sometimes in this process. And the reality is that we do want them to succeed. And I'm just wondering if there is a So, we ask questions related to that in the application process. We also have a minimum threshold of expectation of what we're looking for as well. And it's why we are also going to be establishing a benchmark that the schools will need to meet in order for them to be able to open. Okay. That's all I have for now. I may have additional questions later. Member Hickman? Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation and answering my questions.
I have a few more and also thank you to the testifiers for coming. I found the conversation helpful. Like I said when I was asking a question of the testifiers, we only get a chance at the very beginning in the application process and the veto take no action and then it's up to TEA to kind of take it from there. So you mentioned and the themes is or the trends is what I'm really interested in. You mentioned funding. One of the testifiers, Ian, you mentioned
leadership experience or training. Is it possible to add a resume or training or certifications or part I've heard of incubators and different development for the school leaders. I think that's an indicator we could look at of who the people are bringing this application. So that's one thing. Certified teachers is that in the application or do people bring that up in the application? There's a section around staffing. Yes, sir. Okay. And then does TEA
hold the applicant to whatever they put in the application regarding staffing? Yes. So if an applicant so, charter schools have the flexibility to set their approach. We actually have a number of our schools actually choose to require certified teachers of their teaching staff. And so that's something that they conduct through their hiring process. And so they follow through with that as they execute their model. Okay. And if if they have a plan that says 80% certified and they only end up with half, what happens? It's not an indicator that we track track on a year to year basis.
They are all required to have certified staff for special education, special populations, bilingual and special education. And that is something that we do track through the RDA process. It's making sure that they have the appropriate staff and then also through cyclical monitoring, that the schools receive as part of that way. Okay. And then I follow-up on Mr. Maynard on, I think it's kind of a market study. Somebody brought up charter saturation. You gave data on the neighboring school. So for a parent considering where to send my kid, and then us deciding do we need another charter in that neighborhood,
I don't know if we already have in the application all the existing charters, planned charters, neighborhood schools. I don't know if anyone's thought about vouchers. We're now going to have private schools vouchers. So there's lots of options in certain neighborhoods, few options in other neighborhoods. Do we have something like that in the application already of kind of what the neighborhood looks like where the school is planned? Yes, sir. Okay. And the last thing is, it seems like the recent applicants have done, I guess, worse than average. Does charter performance grow over time?
So as you get established and figure it out, your grade A through F goes up? We see both. So we school we see schools that do improve over time. For example, Prelude Preparatory is one of those schools has improved over time from their launch. And so they're now They have a B rating this year. And we also see schools continue to struggle. And so I think that's part of the process of those schools are part of the same school improvement interventions that the traditional ISD campuses are. They have to create plans for improvement,
and then ultimately know that their ability to exist is contingent on their ability to improve. So I think, it is at every charters insistence and their boards to hold those leaders accountable for results and their responsibility to do as such too. Okay. I guess that we had to go through this exercise, but I don't see a silver bullet of at its infancy guessing which charter is going to end up being an A versus which one's going to be an F. Does that make sense? Correct. I mean, I think we are evaluating them on making sure that when we think about do
they have strong instructional practices, Do they have strong instructional leadership? Do they have strong high quality instructional materials? Are they running us down budgets? And then are they actually going to be able to attract the students that are necessary? I think to member Parents question in order to operate those schools. So I think that while there is no, I think our application process is assessing for all of those things. We would not bring those entities forward if we did not felt that they met that through the application process and the capacity interview. Ultimately, the result relies in the execution and how those schools kind of start and run
those schools. Okay. That's all for me. Thank you, Chair. Member Revels. Thank you, Chair. Hi. Hi. I know it was said earlier today that, you know, there's just like public schools, there's A rated public schools, separated public schools, just in charge of the same. I think the only fallacy with that concept is that without exception, at least in my year that I've been here, every single applicant has come to say that they're filling in a void in education. So I think we do need to hold those schools to higher standards since they're saying they're coming in to deal with a lack of opportunity and a lack of
option for students in that neighborhood. Having said that, in the application process, what is the agency's responsibility to double check the information that's included in the application? You know, are we making sure that the claims they're making or the information they're provided is accurate, it is solid. And I think, Member Meader kind of went that way a little bit in making sure that we're following through and that the application information, which is what we really are are basing our decision on is,
not just accurate but also viable. What's what's the agency's role in that? So we are obviously when an an entity has previous performance or, we verify that through due diligence process, and do that as well. That we are verifying the data that they're putting around, into their applications around local schools and things of that nature. So we're doing that verification. But oftentimes the application is forward looking about what they propose and what they plan to do. And so our process is around making sure that they're meeting that they are contractually
required to put what they are executing in their application process. And then ultimately we are assessing them on the outcomes both financially and academically as well too. So just like we, the agency's part of the process is to vet the proposals, and bring the strongest ones forward to the board. Is that process that process include, taking a look at their histories and any sort of, red flags or, you know, any information that could be detrimental for the long term success of that? Can you basically,
if there is a risk there based on their history, based on what they've done in, that this charter applicant has done in other states, other cities, is is that assessed by the agency and then is that communicated to the SBOE? So yes, we assess it. So we require for all existing entities, we require them to submit audits. We require them to submit their performance data. So as part of the experienced operator application as well as the high performing entities application, we ask them to submit performance data to us of all of their schools.
They have to submit evidence of any issues that they might have had. So that is all included in the application that is shared with SBOE members. And so that is how we collect that information. We evaluate it, we assess it and we make determinations, as part of that recommendation process as well. And so it does include taking a look at at, you know, whether or not this has even they've applied for for, the charters in other states and not been okay. Yes, sir. The other question I have, could you, you know, given the three F rule that's
in books right now, what is the process when a charter has scored an f three years in a row? What is the process of closure? So I wanna make sure that we're staying to the item, which is about the the five year review. So, the process is we evaluate their data. We when that data is final every year after the appeals process, then we, meet with our legal team. We send them a letter and then we execute. We have a closure protocol that we follow. So so is that is this a hard set rule, three f's in a row and you're you're close? It's statute. It's set by the legislature. So our job as the agency is to implement the statute that the legislature has
set, and that is a statutory performance requirement that they have set. So the three the three schools that this year had three consecutive f's, we should expect those schools to be to be closed. We will make that determination based on the final ratings that are awarded. They haven't and those final ratings haven't been announced? The appeals window is still in process currently. I guess I see what you mean. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Member Charles. Thank you. Can you talk about the difference between a mandatory revocation of a charter at the five year mark versus a charter expiring at the five year mark? So we are a little outside of the bounds of the what we're posted for.
So I'm just asking because there are some schools that might be impacted by this at the because they've been in existence for five years. So So since it's a five year review, I was just asking for clarification. Yeah. So we follow statute for the three year requirement. When a school is in the last year of its renewal contract, we assess their performance. They submit an application to us. In rule, there is a list of reasons in which the commissioner may make a discretionary non renewal determination. Historically, we have the past year,
we made a determination based on academic performance and financial performance. And so we do that through communication with the school, and through a visit process as well. Okay. I'll leave it. So I have reviewed the posting. We're posted for the last five years. So I think that was the intent of the request when I received this. Member Maynard? We get a number of applications from schools that are part of national networks. Microphone please. You just got to really talk right into it, don't you? Uncomfortably close. Uncomfortably close. So,
we get a number of applications from those that are part of national charter networks? Yes, sir. And so if a charter is part of a national organization, national network, okay, the out of state organization what can they and what can they not provide for that charter in Texas? It's based on a contractual relationship and how they choose to structure that and set that up. There are non delegable duties that the board that we contract with has,
including hiring the superintendent, making the final budgetary decisions, things of that nature. But ultimately it's governed by that contract. There is a specific statute around that they are excuse me, rule around not being able to provide and I believe it's a statute as well. I'm a let legal check me on that. About not being able to provide loans to the local nonprofit in order to make sure that they are able to accurately hold that entity to a contractual relationship and not be beholden to them for any resources.
Okay. But can the national organization provide things like like manage help manage their payroll, you know, benefits or anything like that? Can they do that? It depends on the the contract that they structure. And so they would either need to, potentially, donate those services or charge a fee for those services. Okay. And just in terms of charter operators that are not part of a network that are just standalone brand new charter operators, just in terms of logistics and things like back office and things like that, what do we have for them? So they are required for obtaining those services for themselves.
The agency does provide PEIMS consulting and support. So we have a technical assistance provider that works with those schools. But ultimately the full responsibility of running those schools lies with the board that we have executed the contract with. Okay. Are there services to maybe for example if you're a startup and you don't have a lot of numbers maybe you don't really have the wherewithal to hire a business manager, okay. And so what is available because we actually have some rural schools in Far West Texas that operate their business
operations through the service center. Yes sir. And are those services available to those charters? They are available to them. So it's up to the school to make those determinations about what they see as best fit for them. I would say also, this is a place where the Charter Association also works to support schools. And so the agency really does not get in the middle of vendor identification in that way. So we kind of leave that up to those support organizations. Okay. And just maybe some reflections. How long have you done this? A while.
I started as a charter school teacher in 02/2007, I went to grad school and then have been an authorizer since 02/2011. Okay. You've done this for a while. Yes, sir. Okay. I know that you kind of have a have a sense of things. And I think that you probably can tell when a new charter really has the potential to succeed because you've done this for a long time. And I've kind of done similar work and you just kind of know. You kind of perceive those things.
In your estimation, in your professional view and just your intuition, the charters that really succeed and do really well, What can you tell us about those that your observation? Well, thank you, Member Mainer. So and your vote of confidence in me. I would say we are bringing that to bear through the application process, Right? So if you look at the number of the past ten years of we had 78 schools go to capacity and review and 53 of those, were recommended by the commissioner. Right? So we are setting that bar and using that through the application process in order
to do that. So that differential of those 25 schools, like that's where we are making those determinations is through that recommendation. I think ultimately we do not bring forward a school, unless we feel like they are ready to go on day one. There have been, I think questions around, could we loosen up for innovation or flexibility? Do schools really need to have a superintendent? Could we have more leeway in the application process to try to lean towards innovation? And I think the agency has really tried to make sure that we hold the high bar and that schools are planning and have all of those details set on
day one. We believe that's very important. And so that is what the process is designed to do in that way. And that is what we are assessing for each year through our criteria and through the process. Member Brooks? Thank you. I have a question about the waiting list. So there's a lot of talk about a long waiting list to get into CharterScope program. So just kind of looking at the projected attendance and the actual amount of students in schools, what does the waiting list look like in Texas?
And can you talk about the schools with the highest waiting list and how perhaps things that they're doing could also be, do you have a way to communicate between schools with a high waiting list between students, between charter schools who kind of could use more assistance in perhaps their enrollment? Like are there any relationship building techniques going on between schools that prove to be more proficient or who seem to be doing well as in comparison to others? Do you have anything like that,
like mentorship programs? So first, the list. And secondly, what do you do, how are you using leveraging schools with a high waiting list because they're offering something that is appealing to parents. So how do you do you have any data to show what they're doing maybe differently from other charter schools? So I don't have the specific wait list numbers in front of me, but the report is on our website. And it's open to anybody to access it. And in that report, we have the schools that have an order by their wait list.
So I recommend anybody and we can provide that afterwards as well, sir. So, we don't have a specific mentorship type program. I think it really depends on academic model location and what families are looking for. And so I think what we have seen first and foremost, the schools with the highest wait list have the highest academic outcomes for their students. So naturally, that is the kind of connection that exists there. We do bring our operators together quarterly by size through our operator council process, where we allow them to connect,
share issues, talk to each other. So that's one way that we do try to bring applicants or excuse me, our existing operators together. Thank you. Okay. I got member Perez Diaz, Hickman, Clark, Childs, Pickering. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Ms. Shetty. So I'm trying to wrap my head around the process. And so in order for me to better understand how, just the process overall, I know the question was asked earlier. I don't know that I got an answer and maybe I'm not understanding it, but when is it determined that through this process, the charter is at revocation versus expiration?
Because I know that those two processes offer different pathways forward. And so can you explain to me how it's determined, who's revoked and who's expired? Yes. So Just real quick. Just want to make sure we're staying within the posting. We're getting back out wonder. Is that not part of the this is part at least from my perspective, it's part of the process, right, as we're assessing what this what the applicants look like? So the posting of the five year review, so in so much as you can make it germane to the past five years.
Well, I mean, revocation and expiration happen within five years, right? And it's a review within the five years that makes The past five years of approval processes that we've run at the Board. It's like a five year look back we're talking about. Right. Within the five year look back, there are particular institutions that are either revoked or expired. I'm wanting to understand how that's determined. Thank you. Great. So we assess every charter school every year for revocation regardless of where they are in their contract term.
So we look at the performance, we're calculating how many years towards those the parlance of strikes essentially, how many strikes that they currently have. So we look at that and we do a count of that for every single charter school at the LEA level, so at the district level. And so we look at that every year, regardless of where they are in their charter contract. So at in the last year of their charter contract, we evaluate them for renewal. If they don't meet standards for renewal, there is mandatory expiration that's part of that process. And so they have to have performance criteria out of three of the last five
years. And then also at that time, if they have any campus that has an unacceptable rating for the three proceeding years and they haven't moved to close that campus and they're not allowed to be renewed as well. So I think one is every year we're seeing where you are towards that three strikes metric. And then in the last year of your charter contract, if you don't meet the required performance then you qualify for expiration. Are you done, Member Perez? Yes. Thank you. Member Hickman? Move to adjourn. Okay. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor of adjourning,
please show by raising your hand. Three. All those opposed, please show by raising your hand. Six three six, the motion fails. Do you have anything else you would like to add? No, at this time. Thank you. Okay. Doctor. Clark? Thank you. Thank you for being here today in your presentation. My question is centered around we had a generation, I would say '26 school, that closed. And it was because, in my opinion, based upon the charter management organization. Right? So when we start talking about charter management organizations outside of the state, how many of those schools have closed because they have CMOs that are not based
in Texas? Do you have that information? I don't have that information in front of me. I can follow-up with you. I haven't called on member Pickering yet. So Pickering and then Charles. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Hi, Marion. How are you doing? Good. Okay. So I have a question because in SBOE seven, families are very blessed to have a very high number of, high quality charter schools. I mean, we have if you look at my long list, I don't know what other members got, but I have a very long list of, high performing charter schools in SBOE seven. So my question is, these high performing charter schools,
they tend to expand in areas of need where traditional public schools have a high concentration of d and f campuses because at their heart, they wanna serve children. They wanna provide options for families. And so, tell me over the last five years, what we do the process of when we have a a or a b or high performing charter that moves into an area where pub where a public school has a lot of high concentration of d and f schools. Are they given any type of grace period to bring those scores up? Because, I mean, obviously, they're taking they're taking families and children who have some,
significant learning loss. So what does that look like for a charter that's moving in that's traditionally high performing, moving into an area that has a high concentration of children that have been in DNF schools? I think we've moved a little bit away from the item. So I wanna make sure that I'm in the right place here. Okay. There is no pause. The schools are evaluated on this system from day one. So in the last five years, even when we have a high performing charter and they move into an area that has a high concentration of DNF, they're still expected to meet the same standards? Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. Sorry. I hope Alright. Thank you. Thank you.
Member Charles. I hope my question has germane to the topic. I'm trying. I'm trying. Okay. So if I'm a charter leader Mhmm. That has operated within this five year period and I had a bond or, had some sort of facilities funding related to a bond. My school closes. What happens with the facilities, loans, bonds? Can you talk a little bit about that? I don't believe this has happened without a bond default, has it? No. Can I call on Chairman Maynard to answer that? We've been guaranteeing bonds since we guaranteed our first bond.
For traditional public school in 1984, we've never had a default on a traditional public school. That said is remember that an ISD is a governmental subdivision with a taxing authority and so it's probably not going to default. Now charter school is a different animal. And understand that when we guarantee a bond on a charter school we have the Charter School Reserve Fund. And so they are paying upfront essentially a self funded bond insurance by paying a percentage of their savings.
And so we actually have a bond guarantee reserve for charter schools. Now we've never had to use that. But I will tell you this is that in order to be eligible for that guarantee they have to have a certain level of bond rating. They have to be I think at least investment grade. And so new charters will never reach that because they don't have the financial strength to reach that. And so just in terms of a bond issuance being guaranteed
on these new charters they probably wouldn't qualify. Any further discussion? Member of Ellis? One quick question. I'm not even not sure that you may know the answer to it, although I think I know the answer to it. If a student from a low performing charter school or a student who's dropped from a charter school transfers back to a traditional ISD, does that traditional ISD get a break in their accountability and the impact that student might have on their accountability rate? In the last five years? Sure. So this is all governed by the accountability manual.
The same rule applies to charter schools as traditional ISDs for all public schools related to when a student counts towards a campus or a district's accountability. And so the the student has to be there in the the fall PEIM snapshot and then also at the assessment in order to count. Yeah. I you know, I think it's just to to, member Pickering's, comment. I think it both it goes both ways. Any further discussion about the last five years? Member Brooks. Thank you. So I've had a question, a few questions from parents about some enrollment grievances.
What's the process for that? Where do I tell them to go when they have an issue where, the school either will not enroll their child or has said their student has been accepted. But then, you know, right before school say that there's no longer room for that student. Like where do you what's the process for parents? Does this apply to a school approved in the last five years? Yes. That's any school in the last five years. What's your process for that, please? So each school has an admissions policy that they follow.
And so, and then also each school has a governing board. Those families can go to that governing board. And then also the agency has a complaints process as well. And so, those individuals can also, submit, agreements to the agency too. Thank you. Any more questions or comments about the last five years? Okay. Seeing none, we will call this item complete. Thank you, Mary Anne, for being here with us today. So that concludes the agenda for today, Tuesday. We'll be back tomorrow, Wednesday. I intend to take up, the commissioner's comments,
so he'll be here at nine. We'll start there and then we'll do item three, then two and four. Stand at ease. Stand adjourned.