A rejected bill would have required schooling on the ‘atrocities of communism’OKLAHOMA CITY — As Oklahoma lawmakers consider how to best prepare students and regulate schools, a House panel approved new pre-college testing requirements and struck down a bill that would have required teaching of the “atrocities of communism.”After a 6-4 vote, House Bill 1094 was the only bill to fail on Monday before a House subcommittee focused on education funding. Rep. Gabe Woolley, R-Broken Arrow, said he wrote the bill to ensure middle and high schools don’t skip lessons about the human cost of communist regimes.Rep. Dick Lowe, R-Amber, pointed out these chapters of history are included in the Oklahoma Academic Standards for social studies, which dictate which topics schools must teach. The Legislature approves those standards, and he said lawmakers typically don’t select individual topics to require through statute.“I don’t think there’s a person on this committee that doesn’t agree this is something that we need to cover,” Lowe said. “… I think it’s very, very dangerous to start setting this precedent. We’ll be doing nothing but that on every standard throughout the whole school system every year if we start doing that.”Lowe’s HB 1087 earned unanimous support Monday. The bill would add 10 steps to the salary schedule for public school teachers. If it passes, teachers’ mandatory annual pay raises would continue for up to 35 years while working in public schools instead of stopping at 25 years.It advances to the full House Appropriations and Budget Committee for further consideration.A proposal to set a universal minimum ACT score for the Oklahoma’s Promise Scholarship also passed through the subcommittee.The state requires a minimum ACT score of 22 only for students who are homeschooled or who attend a school that isn’t accredited by the Oklahoma State Board of Education. Students graduating from public K-12 schools or a state-accredited private school don’t have to make a specific ACT score to qualify for the scholarship.Rep. Rick West, R-Heavener, called this “discriminatory” for homeschool families and proposed HB 1184 to “make it even for everybody.” The bill passed 7-2.After lengthy questioning from Republican and Democratic members, the panel also advanced HB 1096 after a 7-3 vote. The legislation came from the subcommittee’s vice chair, Rep. Toni Hasenbeck, R-Elgin, and would allow students to qualify for statefunded scholarships with a Classic Learning Test score.The CLT is a lesser-known alternative to the ACT and ...
