Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Top Ten bills voted out of committee

Well in a sharp turn around of what I thought would take another few weeks, West's SB 333 and SB 936 were voted out of the Senate Higher Education Subcommittee today. They will now go to the Senate Education Committee for debate.

2 Comments:

At 3:39 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

for the laypeople out here, what do these bills do? the "history" on the lege page is exactly the same...

 
At 5:07 PM, Blogger imasuit said...

OK, point well taken.

For those who don't know, the "Top Ten" law was created in the wake of the 1996 Hopwood decision that eliminated the use of affirmative action in university and college admission policies in Texas. Filed by then-Rep. Irma Rangel, the Top Ten law was meant to give a leg-up to minority high school students; however, its impacts have been widely disputed since its implementation.

Following last summer's Supreme Court decision to permit a watered-down form of affirmative action in all public colleges and universities across the nation, everyone knew that Texas legislators would start working against the Top Ten law.

SB 333 would require that high school students take a tougher core curriculum of classes, such as Advanced Placement - if offered, to qualify for admission to universities under Top Ten.

SB 936 is SB 333's supplement; it would require the Commissioner of Education to develop standards for giving weights to classes such as AP classes, as well as requiring school districts to develop uniform transcript forms.

 

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