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Committee advances bill allowing ESA students to choose norm‑referenced tests over TCAP
Summary
After a long, contentious hearing, the committee voted to move HB 18,81, which would let Education Savings Account students take either TCAP or an approved nationally norm‑referenced test. Supporters said different curricula make the TCAP a poor fit for some private schools; opponents said the program was sold with side‑by‑side TCAP comparability and warned accountability will suffer.
House Bill 18,81 generated the longest debate of the day as members weighed parental choice and program accountability. Sponsor and witnesses argued that private and ESA schools do not always teach the same scope and sequencing as public schools and that allowing a nationally norm‑referenced test lets students show what they learned in the curriculum they followed. Jack Powers of Beacon Impact, who testified, urged the committee to consider scope and sequencing differences, saying that a private school may teach some topics earlier or later than state standards and that forcing a TCAP aligned only to the state's curriculum can depress measured performance.
Opponents repeatedly stressed that the ESA pilot was approved with TCAP comparability as a selling point and that permitting different tests will remove apples‑to‑apples comparisons used to determine whether the program is improving outcomes. One member warned removing TCAP comparability undermines the ability to evaluate whether public funds achieve the results the legislature intended. The committee voted to move the bill to finance by a narrow margin (9 ayes, 8 nays, 2 present‑not‑voting). "If you go into a private school, that is not necessarily the case because they are not teaching Tennessee state standards," witness Jack Powers testified during the hearing.
