The state’s public schools system went on trial Monday in the legislature.

Lawmakers heard legislation regarding whether low-performing schools are doing enough to improve and whether assessments are properly evaluating student success.

It’s a familiar debate, pitting advocates of charters, vouchers and other alternatives against supporters of a traditional system centered on neighborhood public schools.

The assessment conversation comes two years after the legislature compromised to reduce student testing. Lawmakers advanced a bill that reduced about 40 hours of testing, but it didn’t go as far as eliminating ninth-grade assessments.

Lawmakers are back this year with another effort aimed at ninth-grade assessments.

A bipartisan House Bill 1181 would move away from the state English language arts and math assessments administered to Colorado ninth-graders. The bill was approved unanimously by the House Education Committee. It now heads to appropriations.

The state would adopt a new ninth-grade assessment that uses the PSAT as a model, reducing testing time by over six hours for ninth grade students and saving the state more than $600,000 each year. Testing time would be reduced to about 2.4 hours, rather than the current over nine hours for the ninth-grade PARCC assessment.

“Ninth-grade PARCC continues to have the lowest participation rate, which is why we continue to grapple with this every year,” said Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Lakewood, chairwoman of the House Education Committee and a sponsor of House Bill 1181

“We anticipate that this transition will help increase ninth-grade test participation.”

Other assessment bills didn’t have as much luck on Monday.

House Bill 1117 is a Republican bill that would have completely eliminated the requirement for administering the ninth-grade English language arts and math state assessments, as well as the state social studies assessment.

House Bill 1062 is a bipartisan bill that would have made it optional for local districts to administer the state social studies assessment, the ninth-grade math and English language arts state assessments and the 10th-grade assessment.

Another bill in the Senate, Senate Bill 101, would give local districts more flexibility in how they administer ninth- and 10th-grade assessments. That bill is scheduled for a hearing on Thursday.

A separate measure, House Bill 1089, is a Republican effort aimed at addressing low-performing schools. Democrats shot the effort down on Monday.

The controversial measure would have required low-performing schools to establish a parent choice program in which an account would be established for the parent of each student. The school would need to deposit into each account the per-pupil share of funding so that parents could withdraw money to purchase educational services for their child, including enrolling the child in another school.

Some claimed it was an effort to privatize schools, though the sponsor of the bill highlighted that the measure was only meant to apply to schools within the district.

“Are we willing to take bold, decisive action to offer immediate relief to students in districts that are clearly failing them?” asked Rep. Paul Lundeen, R-Monument, the sponsor of House Bill 1089.

But some lawmakers worried about unfairly diverting money.

“This would pull money from schools that need it,” Pettersen said.