a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District
a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District
Cuts because of the state budget shortfall are severe. This year a 1.5% cut in the budget of all state departments was required, and next year it will be 2.5%, by executive order (of the Governor). This has required cuts in staff, with exemptions for the SARs and CSAPs; but because of these exemptions, cuts in administrative areas were more severe. There is also a hiring freeze. Federal funds may help, but they won't be available until May. We are building next year's budget with them in mind.
An audit of our contracts was requested by a legislator, because of the SAR delay. There was a misunderstanding that CTB/McGraw-Hill was returning the tests late, and we were not managing that contract properly. Actually, we have sanctions for every day they are late, with penalty charges. Rather than doing an audit, it resulted in legislators asking questions (about when CSAPs were given, when the results were returned from CTB, copies of all contracts, etc.) for us to respond to, which will be covered at hearing of Audit Committee on March 19. Allowing districts to review data is the longest part of the process; this past year, we had many more changes than we thought we would. We anticipate more changes this year. Districts are getting better student data systems, bringing them online. In a few years it might go faster, but not yet, as districts are working through the "bugs" of their new systems.
HB 1053, the bill to standardize grant applications, was heard yesterday. An amendment was put on at the last minute to have the department collect data only once for grants. It shouldn't cost much more money, but only if we need exactly the same data for each grant. If the needed data is already in CDE somewhere, it is possible. There could be a misunderstanding in the Legislature that this would allow grants to be allocated differently. The grants don't really ask the same questions or look at the same criteria. We have already standardized the applications as much as possible.
SB 141 - off the table?
HB 1122 - Most of this bill is being put into the School Finance bill (HB 1349).
HB 1273, the bill for online students who were not previously enrolled in public schools, sponsored by Rep. Daniel, is different from King's provision in the School Finance bill; King's is less expensive. There is a question about whether King's provision is for 1000 kids only once or 1000 new kids per year. Provides for rules to be made. Word is that there will be a lawsuit if something isn't passed.
SB 80, the bill to update SB00-186, has many, many amendments. There are a couple of provisions that would help districts, such as the change in the Teacher Incentive grants giving them more flexibility (for example, the minimum of $1000 has provided huge problems for districts to disseminate the money). There are advisory committees mandated on the SAR (to review the calculations and methodology of the SAR and to determine the achievement levels on longitudinal growth) and one on grants.
The bill providing the funding trigger for capital construction (and renovation - the Giardino lawsuit settlement) will result in a smaller amount of money available this year (should have been $15 million, but there is no surplus this year to trigger the money). We would like to support the four districts that were counting on the money this year.
SB 94, Anderson's bill on alternative schools, has had no changes made as of yet.
For compliance with NCLB, we must set a definition of AYP (adequate yearly progress). It applies only to reading and math. Alignment of our 4 levels of proficiency with the 3 in NCLB is a concern, because of the question of how we report students who are Partially Proficient. NAEP has 4 categories, so NCLB might be adapted to have 4. If we set proficiency for AYP at Partially Proficient, we would reach our goal faster, but would the skills of our students really be adequate? Colorado also has 5 levels on the SARs for academic performance and for improvement.
We will have to document that we have researched every option for providing choice to Title I schools (those on corrective action and school improvement this year) and all "failing" schools after 3 years.
There are various committees working within CDE on each of the areas of NCLB that we have to make decisions and policies on. The various education groups have been asked to provide a representative to participate in the conversation and make recommendations for the state plan. I requested that the state PTA be given a formal invitation to participate in this process, since NCLB requires parental involvement and PTA is an organization representing about 34,000 members, most of whom are parents.
The Governor's office has written a response to the report from the task force on the SAR issues. An issue that is still of concern is the alternative schools. Roscoe says that we'll do a better job this year of determining which schools should be exempted, since last year it was done in a hurry. Moloney thinks that Anderson's SB 94 is the most likely bill to pass relating to SARs. Anderson is open to changing the bill to eliminate the separate rating system for alternative schools.
The biggest issue is still how to relate this year's ratings to last year's, since re-scaling will take place on all the writing and math CSAPs (since they are given sequentially this year in grades 3-10 for the first time). This issue was brought up at the large group meeting of the SAR task force. A technical advisory committee has been convened with experts in this area (including Glynn Ligon and Bob Linn). The group said that there is a need to align the performance levels in these two areas and adjust the indices leading to the SAR ratings. The performance ratings for this year are based on both last year's tests and the new tests given this year, which will mean that new cut scores will have to be determined. The improvement ratings will be based only on last year's 18 tests. The problem is that the performance rating for a school could be better this year and yet the report card could indicate no improvement in the improvement rating, or vice versa. The technical advisory committee is trying to come up with the fairest way to explain this or adjust it so there isn't a large discrepancy in SAR ratings from last year to this year based on the re-scaling. Until we have the results of this year's CSAPs, there is no way to predict how many schools this might affect. We will try to calculate some kind of preview/projection of what discrepancies we might get, with best-case and worst-case scenarios. It needs to be clarified that this is not CDE's "slip-up," but simply a result of the additional testing. Realizing it in advance may help us avoid the shock and outcry from the public when the SARs are released.
We also need to think about how we will fit in new schools, schools that have changed their configuration, and alternative schools that will be included in the SARs this year but weren't last year.
We are looking at making only technical corrections this year. We will start with the things that everyone agrees on, things that can be solved, and things that we can do to prevent "firestorms" that are avoidable.
Several people in the department are working on analyzing what kinds of information NCLB requires in school report cards. Don Watson will put together this information.
Both Senator Matsunaka (with SB 59) and the Governor (with the task force that he is convening) seem to believe that CSAP reporting is not diagnostic enough. At last June's Standards and Assessments Conference, a workshop was given showing how we already can get very diagnostic information. Orr pointed out that there may be very political reasons (elections) for politicians to be talking about this, but that doesn't mean that we should worry about it.
In December, the SBE awarded a Science and Technology Education Center Grant to the Colorado Consortium for Earth and Space Science Education, with three conditions. The CCESSE have met the conditions, and the funding will be forthcoming to develop the Challenger Learning Center of Colorado Springs. There was another grant available, but the other applicant did not meet the qualifications. We will have to go through another competition cycle to allocate the unexpended funds. Stanford proposed that because of the constraints of the state budget and the lack of availability of money for new projects, we consider asking the JBC to put the money into other education needs. It is money from the State Education Fund (Amendment 23). DeHoff pointed out that changing it would require legislative change. We can postpone the issuing of the RFP for the other grant until April, to see what happens.
There are perceptions that students of virtual schools do not take CSAP, that there is no way to determine whether their students actually complete course work, that virtual schools have much higher dropout rates, that there is no evaluation of the quality of the teachers or curriculum, etc. CDE is auditing the current programs to determine the validity of these perceptions and suggest actions that might be taken if they are true. Students in virtual schools do take CSAP, but not enough effort goes into ensuring that as many students as possible travel to take the CSAP; we could require that more testing sites be made available. The two virtual schools that had been in place last year were exempted from SARs last year because they serve alternative students (e.g., dropouts). The SBE might consider developing guidelines for online schools, but the districts are ultimately responsible for what they do, and the Regional Service Teams monitor them. Dropout rates in virtual schools is not significantly different from that of regular "brick and mortar" schools, but all virtual schools now have more students enrolled than their PPOR support total.
An e-learning task force (a group of various interested parties, of which one is CDE) has been working on developing a consensus organization to bring a more collaborative approach to online learning in the state and to assure that there is equitable access to online learning throughout the state. NASBE has a wonderful report - "Any Time, Any Place, Any Time, Any Pace: Taking the Lead on E-Learning Policy" - with excellent recommendations.
On April 19 the SBE will be meeting with the State Land Board (time not arranged yet). We need to broaden the coalition working on the school trust lands issues.
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