TEXAS AFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE--TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2009 (copyright 2009 Texas AFT)   * TEA Encourages Use of Campus Charters * TEA Warns Against Evasion of New Law on Grading Policy   TEA Encourages Campus Charters: Texas law empowers not only the State Board of Education but also local school boards to authorize creation of charter schools. The Texas Education Agency on Friday notified school districts that they are eligible for start-up grants from the federal government for new charter campuses approved by local school boards before September 1. Deadline for submitting the necessary documentation to TEA is September 8.   The SBOE approval process for state-granted charter schools regrettably has tended to set the bar low for academic quality. As a rule, these state charter schools have high student and teacher turnover, lower scores on state achievement tests, and lower levels of appropriate teacher certification--and not coincidentally, lower pay and benefits for their teachers. The disappointing quality of most state-approved charters contributed to the failure of a charter-expansion bill in the 2009 state legislative session.   In contrast, locally approved charter campuses offer a number of potential advantages for charter advocates interested in fulfilling the original vision of charter schools as experimental campuses that would maintain high educational standards. Because teacher input and approval are state-mandated for conversion of a campus to charter status, teachers have a much better chance to ensure that educational standards will be upheld. Parental input and approval also are mandated when charter campuses are created by this route. Even when a brand-new campus is created with the intent of making it a charter school, neither students nor teachers may be assigned to that campus without their consent.   These provisions ensuring buy-in for the charter experiment from those most deeply involved in the school go a long way toward ensuring academic quality. The potential for worthwhile educational innovations via campus charters has led several Texas AFT local affiliates to work toward the development of charter campuses in their school districts.   However, educators need to recognize that there are also potential pitfalls. The provisions of a proposed campus charter must be carefully scrutinized, because they can exempt the campus and its staff and students from key safeguards in state law, including: teachers' contract rights, state guarantees of planning and preparation periods, duty-free lunches, state personal leave, and teacher authority to remove violent and disruptive students under the Safe Schools Act.   TEA Warns Against Evasion of New Law on Grading Policy: Sure enough, a significant number of school districts are trying to evade the impact of a new state law intended to uphold teachers' grading authority. The new law prohibits school districts from requiring teachers to give students a minimum grade that does not reflect students' actual mastery of their assignments. (The law still allows policies permitting students to do make-up work or retake exams to attain a passing grade.) But some districts are saying that the law only speaks to grades on "assignments," not grades for whole grading periods, so they claim they are still free to dictate students' minimum cumulative grades.   This strained interpretation of the law, which would frustrate its clear intent, is receiving zero support from the bill's author and from the Texas Education Agency. Sen. Jane Nelson, Republican of Lewisville, says she was aiming to put an end to the practice of issuing minimum grades unrelated to the quality of a student's actual work--period. A spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency told the Dallas Morning News that "districts need to give accurate grades to students, and that includes report card grades. It's pretty simple, give the grade students earned and stick with that."   With TEA taking this commendably firm line on the meaning of the new law, it will be interesting to see if some districts persist in attempting to evade it. If they do, the commissioner of education and eventually if necessary the courts, not the school districts, will have the final say on what the law requires.