a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District
a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District
The state budget process is at a lull at this time. Staff is working on a cover letter for us to submit with the CDE budget in November. Federal lands and lease money are coming in at a higher rate than anticipated. Last year we waived a rule regarding the October 1 start date, but legislation passed effective next year which is probably direction from the Legislature to stop waiving it. However, we have this year to waive it one last time. I asked if this applies to Special Education, especially Early Childhood Special Education, for which we have allowed a December 1 count date. Karen Stroup was not sure.
On the SARs, we have had extensive meetings with "the powers that be" in the Capitol (Rick O’Donnell and the Governor’s office) about the problems we have had with the growth rating (there is only a 68% confidence level with the accuracy of the data, based on the method proscribed by law to do the calculations; we have had the individual student identifiers for one year, and two years are needed to calculation growth from one year to the next). This year it will still be a "pilot program," meaning that it will not appear on the SAR, but we will carry through with doing all the calculations. The way that the growth rating is calculated is very, very different from the improvement rating. The longitudinal measure is also problematic. I asked if this is different from the Sanders pilot project that CDE and several school districts have been doing. Stroup said that it is the same theory, but it is not as refined. The Sanders model uses other tests as well (such as the Terra Nova), but this one uses only CSAP. The Board is in consensus that we should take our time to "do it right," even if that means a year delay.
Proposed amendments to rules for the Administration of the School Improvement Plan include a deletion of reference to a preliminary plan for school improvement. We will hold a hearing on these amendments in the November meeting.
Work continues to make all of the Accreditation Indicators more quantifiable. The Regional Services Unit is working with Vody Herrmann in the School Finance Unit on the specific indicators for the new finance indicator established by law. Polis asked if we will see updates to Accreditation rules for both online programs and closing the achievement gap. There is a group of people from CDE, CASB, and CASE working on the quality of cyberschools. I asked Davidson to take to that group the materials I brought back from the USDOE Summit on E-Learning on quality of online programs and teachers. Polis raised the concern that the work group does not include anyone from one of the cyberschools. I said that Tim Snyder is someone who has that expertise. DeHoff said that Snyder represents a different point of view from the cyberschools. I argued that he was in charge of one at the district he worked for before coming to CDE. DeHoff said that there is a divergence of opinion in the online community, and Snyder is on the opposite side from the cyberschools – there is a perception that he is opposed to them. Suckla said that we need to ensure that the group focuses on what is quality, not protection of individual cyberschools. Moloney said that we should have confidence that the SBE will look over the rules and make sure that they are fair.
Munn raised the concern that we still don’t have rules for closing the achievement gap, from SB 254, although he has raised this concern month after month, and we were promised that this month we would have them for sure. Moloney said that we have been focusing on the conversion of Cole Middle School, which intersects with the closing the achievement gap issue. He also said that the law says we "may" make rules, not that we must; also, he said that whether we have to write rules is questionable. I said that the law requires us to define in rules as what the achievement gap is. Munn said that it does talk about helping schools that are in danger of being unsatisfactory for 3 years and then converted to a charter school, but that is not all it addresses; we were going to identify schools that have the achievement gap we defined and identify strategies to help them. Roscoe Davidson, Deputy Commissioner, said that our Accreditation rules deal with looking at the performance of different groups, such as differences in gender, minority populations, and gifted and talented. Munn said the point is that we are supposed to be doing things differently, and despite the fact that the law didn’t allocate any resources, we have done nothing. Munn said that we haven’t identified the students who need the extra help. He emphasized that we need to get this done and asked what we need to do to get it done. Moloney said that a great deal has been done; it is our central point of emphasis in Accreditation. Munn pointed out that we had been told we would receive a "taxonomy" for defining the achievement gap; Moloney said that will be developed. Munn said that we were supposed to develop a systematic program of strategies to help schools with an achievement gap. DeHoff said that the law requires us to define what a "significant" achievement gap is, and we have to distribute strategies to help the "eligible schools." I pointed out that we are supposed to have these strategies available to the Commission, for them to use in their consideration. Suckla said that we have not written down a definition, and it raises the question of whether schools that are not rated Unsatisfactory still have an achievement gap. Orr said that all schools rated Unsatisfactory should be considered to have an achievement gap. DeHoff suggested that we wait until the NASBE Study Group on Closing the Achievement Gap comes out with its report in October, because that will contain all the successful strategies that have been used throughout the country. The decision was to wait until the October meeting to discuss it. I warned that we will have a lot on our agenda for October, with the applications for converting Cole Middle School to a charter school to discuss, and the Commission's report is due on November 1. Munn said that the Commission's report is only a preliminary one.
CDE has hired Dr. Frank Davila to take over the English Language Acquisition Unit, since Flo Lenhart retired. He and the ELAU did an overview of their work to determine their current status, priorities, responsibilities, and timelines, so that the staff can best accomplish all that they need to. ELL demographics in the state include 91,749 students in Title III (the federal definition under NCLB includes them for at least 3 years); 35,374 in ELPA (the state definition includes them for two years); 26,176 migrant; and 4,000 refugee. In ELPA, the number of eligible students has increased 63% over the last 10 years; 110 school districts have students eligible for this funding; and the students speak 143 different languages. (The most commonly spoken foreign language is Spanish; coming in next at much, much smaller numbers are Vietnamese, Korean, and Russian, in that order descending, followed by Hmong, Arabic, and Chinese). Refugees remain in the category as long as they are in the public school system; there are 6 school districts with these students (Denver, Westminster 50, Boulder Valley, Aurora, Jefferson County, and Cherry Creek). Out of the 8 regions of the state, the great majority of ELL students are in the metro area, although about a fifth are in the North Central area. However, in terms of migrant students, the North Central region has a significant number, nearly half the number of the metro area.
At our last meeting, we decided to write a letter to the Cole Review Committee with our concerns/priorities ("matters that we would find useful in rendering our decision"). They have been identified as:
A track record of academic success in serving students with demographics similar to Cole’s.
A plan for parental and community outreach.
A strong reading program.
A plan for coordinating efforts with Cole’s "feeder schools."
A commitment to serving Cole’s current student population.
We reviewed the draft of the letter and approved it to be given to the committee.
Stroup emphasized that we are revisiting these rules because of changes in School Finance regarding online students. The proposed rules have been rewritten to conform in language more closely with law. At issue is the designation of which students can be exempt from the requirement that they have been enrolled in a Colorado public school during the previous school year. I asked why the term "cyberschools" was removed – Stroup said it if because the term isn’t in the statute and because the question has to do with whether the student is enrolled full-time or part-time. I said that I thought the issue was that cyberschool students are funded at the statewide average PPOR, and students regularly enrolled who take a couple of online classes are funded at the district’s PPOR. Stroup agreed, and said that this is taken care of in the revised rules with the definition of "pupil enrollment."
There is an alternative CSAP for special education students with profound disabilities, the CSAP-A. Janet Filbin, from the Exceptional Students Services Unit at CDE, reviewed the reasons that these assessments were developed: IDEA requires that students with disabilities be included in state and district-wide assessments, and NCLB allows a percentage of disabled students to take an alternative exam and count toward AYP. Colorado has written "expanded benchmarks" that match the standards but are tailored for students with severe disabilities. Whereas the CSAP is a pencil-and-paper test, the CSAP-A is activity-based, since students may not have the ability to respond verbally. For example, they may use pictures or a communication device. Students are scored on their level of independence with which they perform each activity and the level of support they need to complete each indicator. There are 5 proficiency levels: inconclusive, exploring, emerging, developing, and novice. "Emerging, developing, and novice" are equivalent to our federal definition of proficient. Approximately 1% of students take CSAP-A, which is 10% of students on IEPs. NCLB allows only students who have severe cognitive disabilities to count on the CSAP-A for their AYP. (Click on Assessments page on CDE website and scroll down to CSAP-A for more information.)
CSEAC, the Colorado Special Education Advisory Committee, represented by its co-chairs, gave us their annual report. Laura Merrill, outgoing co-chair, said she was impressed with how CSEAC’s goals fit with the SBE’s Strategic Plan. She gave us a matrix showing how their work has matched our goals and objectives. CSEAC had a Task Force to examine the IEP process, since Congress is considering making changes in it with the reauthorization of IDEA; the Task Force made the following key recommendations: make the IEP meaningful to both educators and parents; set achievable goals for students; and increase the efficiency of the IEP process, e.g., non-duplication of paperwork. (The complete report is on the CDE website.) CSEAC wants to continue to promote early identification of children with disabilities. They will be looking at identifying mental health needs. They had a discussion about the over-representation of minority boys in Special Education; CSEAC is looking at it to explore the reasons – some may include the need for continued progress monitoring through assessments, especially in reading in the early years. CSEAC members are on the team in the Exceptional Students Services Unit of CDE working on the issue of "Highly Qualified" Special Education teachers. CSEAC has done outreach so that more people around the state know that they exist and how they can help address issues in Special Education. They will be looking into the barriers that students with disabilities have to attend some schools of choice, since many are not accessible. Munn asked them to give us more frequent advice. We asked for advice on topics such as on legislation, professional development, special education funding, schools of choice, and other policy issues that they think we should look at.
Jo O’Brien gave us an itemized list of the assessment frameworks in Math – i.e., the concepts that the CSAPs are based on at each level from grade 3 to 10. O’Brien insists that the equal percentile method was used in 2002 to address the concerns raised that the math CSAPs were overly difficult. The CSAPs are absolutely based on the standards, and if we find that only 20% of the population are proficient, the fault is in how much math they are learning. The results of the CSAPs show that only half the students in the state are proficient in math in grade 5; by 10th grade it drops to a quarter. On NAEP, Colorado was 12th in the nation on 4th grade math and 3rd on 8th grade math. Our students who take the same math core subjects as the others around the country who pay to take the ACT do better than the national average on the ACT. O’Brien has calculated the correlation of our students’ scores on CSAP at different levels with ACT or NAEP. Middle school is especially important, because that is when algebra, geometry, and other higher mathematics are taught. The controversy about the math standards is because many people don’t believe that all students should be required to know these higher math concepts.
On our first Legislative Day on September 24, we will focus on 4 areas: Accountability (9 - 10 a.m.), Finance (10 a.m. - 12 p.m.), Choice (12 - 2 p.m.) and Regulation (2 p.m. to end). We will have staff here for technical advice, but it will be a Board discussion on what our legislative agenda will be for the 2005 session.
Colorado participated along with 16 other states to determine what we can look at as indicators for children’s school readiness. This was a privately funded grant project. The Ford Foundation approached the Colorado Children’s Campaign, who then consulted with the Governor to approve our participation. The Task Force is asking whether the SBE would endorse the indicators. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment was the lead agency, because they are working on a number of desired outcomes for children, which includes school readiness. This past year the Legislature approved the Early Childhood and School Readiness Commission, which (among a number of things) will be working on using the indicators to inform public policy. The purpose of the indicators is to describe conditions with the child, family, and community that can inform planning and policymaking, to measure progress, and to monitor the impact of investments and policy choices. The 4 domains of readiness – readiness in children, in families, in communities, and in schools – came from national research. Readiness in children has 4 areas – physical well-being and motor development, social and emotional development, language development, and cognition and general knowledge. Family readiness falls into the categories of economic factors, education factors, and family stability factors. The Task Force’s report will be out soon, and there will be a website with the data for all the indicators. There is a state team, the Early Childhood State Systems Team, working on coordinating the efforts of various state departments in preparing students for school. The 17 states working on this project will be compiling information from all the projects to come up with a list of indicators to use nationally to inform national policy. DeHoff expressed concern that the indicators confuse causality and correlation. He and Orr expressed concerns that it’s not the government’s responsibility to solve all of children’s problems. The Task Force presenters said that they are just asking if we would consider using this to inform our work. Several Board members said that they need more time to read the information before deciding whether to endorse the indicators.
Members of the committee introduced themselves to us. The committee (the membership of which is set by statute) consists of two representatives from the Cole Accountability Committee (Erlinda Moreno and Eddie Simon), a teacher from Cole (Kathy Bougher), a member of the DPS board (Kevin Patterson), a middle school teacher from an excellent-rated school (Craig Bowman, an English teacher in Jefferson County), a principal from an excellent-rated school (Sally Stanley, a principal in Douglas County), and a business person representing the Cole area (Jerry Duran).
Bougher said that Cole’s scores have been steadily rising, even when many other schools’ scores are not. Furthermore, she pointed out that although the school does not have a high percentage of students in the Proficient and Advanced categories, many have moved from Unsatisfactory to Partially Proficient. Moreno said that the kids need to be encouraged, that there is a fear by undocumented parents of getting involved because they are not legal, and the kids sense that fear. Bowman said that he thinks Cole needs a close communication and relationship with parents. Patterson said that Cole historically was a school for African-American students, but busing and the siting of the Denver School of the Arts there changed its demographics; now there has been a dramatic growth of Latino students in that neighborhood. Changes in the community and Cole’s return to a neighborhood school have affected its performance on CSAP. Groups like the Piton Foundation have been looking at how to get parents more involved. He wants this process to stay in touch with the Cole community. Many parents have told the DPS board that they want the Cole reform plan, begun 3 years ago, continue. He wants to keep that momentum going.
Polis read the SBE’s letter to the group. He pointed out that this is the first such committee, and there have been no precedents set. He said that this committee will be like a District Accountability Committee to the SBE in this matter. Munn said that the committee can ask CDE for any information that they might need. Polis pointed out that Roscoe Davidson, the chair of the committee, is also CDE’s liaison from CDE. Patterson asked what they should do if there are no applications or no applications that they feel they can recommend to us. DeHoff said that we are looking for an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of all the applications. He said that we are not sure what will be done if there are no applications. Orr said that the committee members are pioneers in a sense; this is an opportunity to make some history by taking on this challenge. The committee asked if the dates can be changed (of the applications being turned in by September 20 and making their recommendations to us by October 13). Polis said that we believe that if we need it, we probably have some flexibility. If there are no applications, we would extend the date to accept applications, and if there are between 2 and 8 applications, the current timeline should be appropriate. The committee asked whether they should take the input of community groups. We responded that we think that is a good idea, but it’s up to them. Suckla said that we are here to help all children, not to be the immigration police.
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