Two House education bills die in Senate committee
03/31/2017

Two House education bills were defeated Wednesday in the Senate Education Committee.

HB 1383 (Behning, R- Indianapolis) would initially have required every elementary school teacher licensed after 2021 to secure specialization in a specific content area and would have eliminated the elementary generalist license.

Facing opposition to the bill, Rep. Behning amended the bill that took some small steps back.

The amendment would have directed the state Board of Education to establish “one or more elementary school teacher content area licenses that must, at a minimum, include a content area license that includes math and science.”

The amendment wasn’t sufficient to warrant support for the bill. The Senate Education Committee defeated the bill 6-5.

The second bill defeated was HB 1386 (Behning, R- Indianapolis), which would have established a competency based education pilot program. The program concept is a system under which a student advances to higher levels of learning at the time the student demonstrates competency in concepts and skills regardless of grade level, place or pace. Students would have progressed by meeting benchmarks through assessments. The program would have provided grants to schools for designing and implementing models.

Testimony from ISTA and others highlighted that these types of programs are already occurring in schools around the state. It was also pointed out that there was no funding provided for the pilot program. These concerns were echoed by some Senate Education Committee members Wednesday.

HB 1386 was defeated 8-3. It’s important to note that although these bills were defeated, they could reappear later in the session under another bill since they passed the House.