Bill > HB177

This bill mandates that the New Mexico Department of Education provide adequate professional development and resources for teachers and school leaders to effectively teach the Common Core standards, which focus on deeper learning, and to prepare students for online assessments like the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) or Smarter Balanced assessments, which require students to demonstrate analytical processes online. The department must also ensure sufficient educational technology is available for these assessments, establish baseline student performance data from these assessments for the 2014-2017 school years, support efforts to improve student scores on these assessments, and develop an alternative college and workplace readiness track for twelfth graders who do not pass these assessments. Crucially, the bill restricts the use of PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments for grade promotion, for any purpose under the A-B-C-D-F Schools Rating Act, and for employment or licensure decisions under the School Personnel Act, and prohibits their use as a graduation requirement. Some of these restrictions are set to expire on July 1, 2018, while the bill itself becomes effective on July 1, 2015.