AN ACT to amend Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 49, relative to opportunity public charter schools.
HB1934 amends Tennessee law governing opportunity public charter schools by requiring the Department of Education to annually collect and publish additional school performance data on its website. The new reporting requirements go beyond the existing four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate and add five- and six-year graduation rates, credit-attainment measures for grades 9-12, and detailed college-and-career-readiness indicators such as ACT performance, postsecondary credit-bearing assessments or courses, industry credentials, and ASVAB results.
The bill also requires that all reported data be disaggregated by student subgroup, including race, ethnicity, gender, disability status, and socioeconomic status, and reported at the school, district, and state levels. In addition, if certain officials know a student is at risk and eligible for an opportunity public charter school, they must provide the student and parent or guardian with information about enrollment eligibility and nearby opportunity public charter schools. The bill takes effect immediately upon becoming law.
The bill expands the state’s reporting and disclosure obligations for opportunity public charter schools under Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 49, Section 49-13-133. It does not create a new school type, but it adds new statewide data collection, publication, and notification duties for the Department of Education, as well as for directors of schools, juvenile court judges, and Department of Children’s Services caseworkers when they are aware of eligible at-risk students. The affected parties are opportunity public charter schools, the state education department, and families of at-risk students who may receive additional enrollment information.
The available voting history suggests broad support and little opposition. The bill received unanimous or near-unanimous favorable recommendations in the House K-12 Subcommittee and the House Education Committee, with no recorded dissenting votes in the provided history. That pattern indicates the measure was generally viewed positively as a transparency and student-information bill.
No committee transcript is provided, and the recorded votes show no opposition, so there is no clear evidence of major contention in the available materials. If any concerns existed, they likely would have centered on the scope of data reporting, the administrative burden on schools and the department, or the new obligation on officials to notify families about opportunity public charter school options for at-risk students. However, those concerns are not reflected in the supplied vote summaries.