a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District
a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District
The projected cuts to school funding were not made, other than the cut across the top to fund the financial staff at CDE. Suckla said that school boards are concerned about CDE looking into their financial matters as a result of the new Accreditation indicator. The Financial Policies and Procedures Committee at CDE includes representatives from school districts and meets to discuss these issues. CDE has done training around the state on the new policies.
I asked about the proposal to change the funding to quarter increments; we have been funding half time for 360 hours per semester and 720 hours per year, based on the SBE rule (written in the 1980s), although the law is 1056 hours. Districts are concerned that if they require only 5 classes for high school students, they will lose money, such as Jeffco, which could lose $14 million. Polis said that funding could improve in some cases, because for kids who are there for 10% of time they could receive funding of a full quarter. DeHoff pointed out that there is a difference between what students are allowed to take and what they choose to take. Apparently Rep. King said the hope is to keep kids in the classes that they need to be in.
The bill adding AYP results to the SARs (HB 1124) has been signed by the Governor. The bill to add questions to SARs (HB 1217) has passed but hasn’t been signed yet – we’ll have 45 days from signature to write the questions.
The Teacher Licensure bill (HB 1104) coming up, but keeps being delayed; the Senate is busy working on School Finance and the budget. The Alliance for Quality Teaching has been looking at the bill because of one of the more controversial parts regarding alternative principal licensure; the Alliance’s members are not in agreement about this. CCHE is pushing for more power; we feel that CDE should maintain its ability to be in charge of this as it is of alternative teacher licensure.
The bill raising Graduation Requirements might not pass, but is moving along. Rumor has it that the bill will die.
Alternative Chartering Authority bills – all are still alive. One piece in both HB 1141 and HB 1362 is allowing the SBE to determine which districts have sole chartering authority, based on some specified criteria. DeHoff said that there are districts where the criteria are not clear-cut, and we will have to decide how we will make those decisions.
A new bill, SB 208, Persistently Dangerous Schools, specifies criteria that are much stricter than NCLB. Thus, there would be nearly 700 schools (40% – but enrolling half the students of the state) that would be identified as Persistently Dangerous. CDE did write a fiscal impact statement (small cost for CDE to notify districts and indeterminate cost to districts to implement) as well as the impact regarding the number of students that would have the option of changing schools. Munn pointed out that the bill is a direct attack on our Board, because some people perceive that our policy isn’t good enough. We will draft a letter to send to the Legislature saying that we don’t think the bill is necessary, what our concerns are, why our policies are what they are, and why the bill will do nothing to make schools safer.
The bill adding a Longitudinal Growth Rating on SAR instead of an Improvement Rating will be coming out as a late bill.
The bill transferring Vocational Education to CDE from the community college system will give us about $27 million of Perkins money and about 11 FTE.
Karen Gerwitz updated additions to our Strategic Plan that we came up with at the February Retreat.
Added this objective under “Maintain commitment to accountability reform and accreditation”: Establish a review process for standards.
Added this under “Increase public engagement”: Formalize and define student engagement. DeHoff said that he doesn’t think we agreed on this; he particularly disagreed with “formalize.” We agreed to rewrite it. Polis pointed out that we already passed a resolution on student engagement, which defined and formalized it.
Munn questioned whether we really want to change the Strategic Plan, because it has already been disseminated to people, and CDE has written work plans based on it. The Board agreed, deciding to put these more as tactics.
Started reviewing the “tactics,” which are basically the Board’s plan for actions that we will take during the next year to implement the Plan, as well as specific activities that we can use the evaluate ourselves next year in terms of how we did. We had a long discussion about an effective manner to review the tactics, to ensure that we are doing them, and to determine how to get them done. Suckla and Littleton said that it would be helpful for us to have a list of the tactics for us to look at regularly.
ADDCREDITATION: Some of the indicators are more qualitative than quantitative. Working to define them in a way that is meaningful and less arguable. One area that is particularly important is establishing criteria for cyberschools. CDE is ready to move into Accreditation activity – with a report to us next month – on this. Several indicators seem to relate fairly directly.
NCLB: The U.S. Department of Education is beginning its data collection process for monitoring purposes. They have selected 4 districts to focus on in our state: Denver, Douglas, Jeffco, and Keensburg. They will look at standards, assessments, teacher quality, implementation of accountability system and assessments, supplemental services, choice, corrective action, how CDE assists districts, and how districts are implementing NCLB. There will be a full review of our NCLB plan next fall.
Pat Chlouber brought the USDOE’s policy summary of new guidelines for more flexibility in implementing NCLB:
For AYP purposes for students with cognitive disabilities, we may count “Proficient” scores on CSAP-A for up to 1 percent of all students in the grades tested.
(1) First year LEP students may take the English language proficiency assessment in lieu of the Reading assessment, but they still must take the Math assessment (accommodations are appropriate).
(2) After LEP students have achieved English proficiency, they may continue to be counted in the LEP subgroup for two years.
(1) In districts of 600 students or less, teachers who are highly qualified in one content area will have 3 years to become highly qualified in the additional subjects they teach.
(2) Science teachers may be designated as highly qualified either through competency in an individual field of science or “broad field” of science.
(3) For multi-subject teachers, states may streamline the HOUSSE for a method to demonstrate their competency in each core academic subject.
(1) Participation rate may be averaged over 3 years to determine if it is 95%.
(2) Schools may omit from participation rate calculations students who cannot take an assessment during the entire testing period due to a significant medical emergency.
One controversial issue is how the dropout rate is determined. Denver’s rate has been questioned in particular. A report (Losing Our Future: How Minority Youth Are Being Left Behind by the Graduation Rate Crisis by the Urban Institute, Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, et al.) points out that in Colorado, a floor of 55% is required for AYP (was determined by the graduation rate of the lowest subgroup). It points out that Denver and Aurora have some of the lowest graduation rates for Hispanics (30.5% and 26.7% respectively). Mentions that each of the 178 school districts define “graduation” differently. Also says that Colorado has larger discrepancies in the achievement gap, particularly for Hispanics, than other states.
SARs: Since HB 1217 is going to become law soon, CDE has been asking different groups around the state for ideas and input on these. CDE has been determining some parameters for the questions, given the fact that there is no funding for providing different questions on all the SARs. There will be 6 different panels, based on the Academic Performance Rating and the Improvement Rating (e.g., if a school is High and Stable).
The Denver Post had an article regarding the law that districts must fund charter schools at 95% but can only keep part of the 5% that fits into specific lines in the Chart of Accounts. Some charter contracts allow the district to keep the full 5% (because their contract was negotiated before the change in the law). There is a discrepancy between what the charter contract says vs. the funding under the Charter School Act, as revised about 3 years ago. It appears that Vody Herrmann of CDE made a determination that the Brighton School District had to refund the remainder of the money to the charter school between the 5% and the specific items on the Chart of Accounts – back for the last 3 years. Moloney pointed out that the Attorney General made a ruling that required CDE to make the payment.
Yolanda Sandoval, president of the Brighton School Board, came to speak with the Board. She said that their Board has been working diligently to have conversations with their charter schools. Many, many hours have gone into negotiating their contracts. They are working to come up with new agreements for existing charter school contracts. She said that the law is very confusing, and both sides believe that they are right. She begged us to keep in minds the needs of children first.
Regarding some of the questions that Board members had during the meeting last month for the approval of the teacher preparation program at Western State, Gotlieb (who had been out of town) said that the SBE’s responsibility is only to approve the content of the courses; the rest is up to CCHE. We can’t change the proposal itself; we can disapprove of it if we don’t think it meets the standards or the content is not appropriate.
Tomorrow, during the Public Comment part of the meeting, the State World Languages Advisory Committee will ask us to make changes in the Foreign Language content standards. Gotlieb warned that a great deal of Board time had been devoted to approving the standards, although few if any of us were on the Board at that time, and we should realize that practitioners in each content area likely have changes that they would like to see. Polis asked her if she was aware that the Board intends to review all the content standards – she wasn’t. Moloney said that we will have a cycle of review of the content standards and can politely listen to them for their 3 minutes without having to respond. I pointed out that we shouldn’t have a closed mind, because the world changes, and some content areas might need to change. Furthermore, I stressed that they are a CDE advisory committee.
YES – Gotlieb said that YES, the Year of Educator Synergy, is a task force that has been created to help develop guidelines that address Colorado’s timeliest education issues regarding teachers. The guidelines that are developed will be put on CDE’s website, along with exemplary programs that incorporate the guidelines to provide good examples for districts thinking about modifying their programs. Topics include how to attract potential educators into the field, how to provide good field experience in teacher preparation, what are the elements of good induction and mentoring, etc.
TeachinColorado.org: This website with education job opportunities has 150 of 178 districts registered. There are about 1000 jobs and 3000 people looking for jobs.
The unit is working on the implementation of Technical Education standards for teacher preparation.
Last year the office received about 50,000 phone calls regarding people’s licensure status. Therefore, they have decided to put licensure status online. Will try also to find a way to get transferral of transcripts online, as well as fingerprinting.
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