SBE Work Session (Wednesday, May 11, 2005) 

LEGISLATION

The Board unanimously supports the following bills and will send a letter to the Governor asking him to sign them into law: 

SB 32 - December 1 Count Date for Preschool Students;

SB 91 - School Accreditation Data;

SB 139 - Statewide Online Education Programs;

SB 196 - State Land Board Investment & Development Fund;

HB 1024 - Income Tax Checkoff to Fund Before- and After-School Programs; and

HB 1246 - Assessments for Students with IEPs.  (We found out later that the Governor had allowed the last one to become law without his signature.)  We did not have consensus on supporting the following bills but agreed that they are very important:  HB 1216 - School Improvement Action Cycle, and SB 214 - K-12 School Accountability.  We reviewed our Legislative Priorities that we had set back in September, and it appears that most of our desired changes occurred!

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

Staff gave us a long list of entities that have worked in cooperation with CDE on the implementation of NCLB.  The main one was the HR1 Hub Committee, a group of education stakeholders that had broken into10 subcommittees to work on various topics of NCLB (such as Adequate Yearly Progress and Highly Qualified Teachers).  We were told that parts of some subcommittees continue to consult with CDE in various areas, such as English Language Learners.  Apparently, federal statute requires us to have a State Committee of Practitioners to advise CDE on how NCLB activities will be implemented throughout the state.  None of the SBE members had ever heard of this committee, although it has been meeting regularly.  We made no significant decisions about NCLB, despite a lengthy discussion about how the Hub Committee might continue to operate, what subcommittees should exist, who will chair them, what changes to our state plan should be made, or what changes to NCLB we would recommend.  Decisions were delayed to our Retreat in June (at the earliest).  Staff recommended that the SCP be used as the central advisory group to pull together ideas from the Hub Committee and all the other groups.

MATH STANDARDS

CDE’s final report on the Math Standards, called “The State’s Prime Numbers,” will be released at the Math Summit in Keystone on June 7.  There are only a few small changes being recommended, and those are to the math benchmarks, not to the standards themselves.   CDE’s research on math in Colorado shows statewide agreement that the math assessment frameworks are “on target.”   But there is great variability in local delivery of math instruction.  People believe in arithmetic but think that only people with a “knack” can do higher math.  There is an essential lack of concern about the importance of knowing math, whereas people feel reading and writing are essential.  These attitudes, prevalent throughout the country, are likely to decrease America’s ability to compete internationally in technical fields.  Colorado is among the top states in math proficiency, yet only 34% of our students are proficient in math on NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), and only 59% of our 5^th graders are proficient on the Math CSAP (and it goes down from there at the successive grade levels).

SBE Regular Meeting (Thursday, May 12, 2005)  

HB 1216

We discussed this bill further, and upon reconsideration, we decided to ask the Governor to sign it.  The SBE members who had been reluctant to support the bill changed their minds because it seems likely that Bruce Randolph Middle School (in Denver) will have to be converted to an independent charter school next year, and if this bill is allowed to become law, that won’t have to happen.  Also, the legislators vowed to make some revisions to the law next year, to address the parts that the SBE is concerned about.

ANOTHER RETIREMENT

We said goodbye to Lorrie Harkness, who has been the Director of the Exceptional Student Services Unit (dealing with special education and gifted/talented education).  Last month we said goodbye to Nancy Bolt, Deputy State Librarian and Assistant Commissioner for State Libraries.  We are seeing many of our excellent senior staff members retiring.

UPCOMING EVENTS

• June 6, 12:30-4:30 p.m. – Hearings on granting exclusive chartering authority for the next school year, for eligible school districts that request it (at CDE).
• June 7 – Math Summit, at Keystone Conference Center (Summit County).
• June 8-9 – SBE Retreat, at Keystone Conference Center.
• July 13 – Next SBE Work Session.
• July 14 – Next SBE Regular Meeting.