a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District
a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District
Brenda Wellburn, Executive Director of NASBE (National Association of State Boards of Education), led the Board in reviewing the elements of effective boardsmanship and helping us devise a strategy for improving the efficacy of the SBE. We covered the following:
We divided into small groups and discussed various areas that we would like to have Board procedures for. We will continue working on these in the next month.
We decided that our goals for the rest of the Retreat are the following:
Clarify what we believe our purpose to be, including what is legally set
Define our common values for public education
Review our mission statement and revise it
Set goals for the year
Clarify procedures and guidelines for how we operate individually and collectively
Commissioner Moloney gave a brief review of the history of education reform and the SBE’s efforts in the past. Education reform was not done by educators, but by politicians. Previously there had only been a handful of people in CDE. State education departments grew after 1965 and ESEA, requiring a large number of people to do regulatory tasks for the federal government.
The first main wave of reform in Colorado was initiated by HB 93-1313, which gave us standards and eventually assessments. Part of the work of the SBE then was to approve the standards. The first CSAPs were given on November 12, 1997. The Accreditation Act of 1998 may have been a result of the poor performance of students on these first CSAPs. The next year, SB 94 was passed for teacher preparation. Then in 2000, SB 186 was passed, but unlike the previous three main pieces of legislation, it did not have bipartisan support (only one Democrat in the Legislature voted for it, and only one Republican voted against it). The SBE worked hard to influence the form of the bill.
What about the second decade of reform? It seems to be focusing on closing the achievement gap. Gil Ford, part of the Coalition to Close the Achievement Gap, questioned whether there truly is the political will to truly work to bring up children of color. There have been a handful of inner city schools in the East that have been taken over by the state, but not much else has happened.
Randy DeHoff, SBE Chair, also gave a historical review. In the mid 1990s, the SBE went through the standards line by line, which the SADI Council had drafted and redrafted with much community input, before approving all of them. When the CSAPs were being prepared, every SBE member had a chance to look at the bank of questions, give feedback, and drive changes. For example, DeHoff and Pat Chlouber initiated the inclusion of pure computation questions on the math CSAPs, in order for the assessments to be able to show whether students’ poor performance resulted from lack of math ability or inability to read. Unlike other states, there was no complaint about the annual testing required by SB 186, which may be due to the positive perception of the quality of CSAP.
Our role now is to fine-tune the structure. It may be time to look at the standards again and tweak them, but they shouldn’t be overhauled.
The CDE staff through the Regional Managers have been reviewing the school districts for the implementation of accreditation rules. Last year they looked at district policies, but this year they’ve been looking at data and at schools. They know the achievement data and the instructional plan and personnel of each district. Human judgment is part of it – the managers get impressions by their visits to districts, but they have to document with bodies of evidence. Letters go out to districts for which CDE has concerns about their growth and progress or attention to areas in need of improvement. The Regional Managers will do an investigation of any districts that appear to not be doing well. They will then write a rationale and recommendation for placing a district on Academic Watch. Then a review panel will be convened to review the body of evidence. Gary Sibigtroth, Assistant Commissioner, makes the final decision about whether to place the district on Academic Watch. If it is, it must put together a corrective action plan, and CDE will approve the plan and provide ongoing technical assistance.
Currently, Regional Managers are gathering the bodies of evidence for districts that they feel might need to be put on Academic Watch. There are about 30 districts that might be sent letters of concern (some have already gone out) by April or May. However, since CSAP data will not be in until July, more time will be taken before the final determination to put a district on Watch.
We truly are basing these decisions on multiple indicators, not only CSAP. Each district is looked at individually, not compared with other districts. If a district can document that it is moving forward in addressing its issues, that is acceptable.
The state constitution says that the Legislature will create “a thorough and uniform system of public schools” and that the SBE is charged with the “general supervision” of this system. The local districts have the constitutional mandate for the specific supervision of the schools. We have a statutory responsibility to set goals and objectives for the improvement of the educational system in the state. Our role, therefore, is to advise the Legislature to make changes that will improve the system, and to do what we can in our supervisory role to ensure that public education is effective.
Our values:
Charged by the Constitution of the State of Colorado with the general supervision of Colorado’s schools,
The mission of the Colorado State Board of Education is to provide all children equal access to quality, thorough, well-rounded educational opportunity in a safe and civil learning environment.
By accomplishing this mission, all children in Colorado will become educated and productive citizens.
Need to take action next to lay out principles for choice, work on finance issues (prioritization of the budget), and take next steps in working on our partnerships with the education community.
We will type up the ideas we came up with yesterday on the areas where we want to specify our procedures and share them with one another to tweak them. We will look at the information from NASBE and other states to determine our process for evaluating the Commissioner and Director for Board Relations, as well as our Board’s self-evaluation.
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