Committee debates grading policy bill, applies prior consent and moves it forward (House Bill 5073)

Madam Chair called committee attention to House Bill 5073, introduced by Mister Bradley and summarized by Pierce as a measure to address inconsistent grading practices across districts. Pierce said, "First, the bill does state that grading must promote college and career readiness by measuring student mastery of rigorous material," and explained the bill also prohibits grading systems that require teachers to assign minimum grades above a student's actual performance, governs credit-recovery timing, and bars districts from using formative assessment scores in course grades.

Committee members debated whether the bill would leave students with low midterm grades without recourse and whether small districts had the capacity to comply. Mister Bowers asked about students who may "give up" after a bad semester and about the potential impact on state aid, saying that 10% of state aid to classrooms could be at issue and citing figures from the materials that appeared as a range (transcript language). Members, including Mister Todd and Mister Alexander, responded that the bill leaves latitude for local solutions (extra credit, teacher judgment) and that districts would only lose funding if they intentionally adopted grading systems that conflicted with the policy. Mister Alexander said, "The only way they're going to lose funding is if they adopt a grading system ... that disagrees with this policy." The transcript records other members expressing both concern about capacity and support, and multiple members referenced conversations with teachers who favored uniform grading standards.

A subcommittee amendment (clarifying the last sentences of the summary and amending the task force deadline referenced in the summary) was considered and the chair asked whether to use unanimous consent to apply a prior vote. Hearing no objection, the chair applied the previous vote to that amendment and later applied the previous vote when members moved to adopt the bill as prepared. The transcript records agreement via unanimous consent but does not include a full roll-call tally for the final adoption in the committee record.

The committee then moved on to higher-education subcommittee items and recessed other bills for further consideration. The transcript shows the committee advanced HB 5073 procedurally after the exchange but does not record an explicit numeric roll-call for the final adoption; it documents application of the prior vote by unanimous consent.