a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District
a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District
Conflict of interest. Last year there was a perception that Polis had a conflict of interest when he was chair of a nonprofit board that was negotiating to open charter schools with local school districts. He decided to step down from that board, and he has recused himself from any votes related to the New America schools, all of which have been approval of waivers, even though he has no financial stake in our granting of waivers to the school (his only financial involvement was that he contributed to the nonprofit organization). This year the issue is DeHoff’s being hired as Executive Director of the Charter School Institute. DeHoff claimed that I also have a conflict of interest because my job involves working with preschools. I mentioned that there could be a conflict of interest when a Board member sells software to schools (referring to Littleton’s job). Suckla said that she doesn’t want the discussion to be personal attacks; that we need to keep the discussion on the general policy. Polis said that for any organization for which we have a fiduciary interest and which has a financial stake in our decision, we should recuse ourselves. Wellburn said that we have to ask ourselves how much the use of recusal takes place before it reduces the Board’s effectiveness, or at least that member’s effectiveness. Munn pointed out that as elected officials, we really can do whatever we want, other than breaking the law. Littleton and Polis said that it is a positive aspect of our members that we are so involved in education. Wellburn recommends that we write a policy to clarify the guidelines under which we choose to operate so we have a common understanding of how to operate. Moloney said that our lawyer from the Attorney General’s office can draft us a policy based on the law. But DeHoff and Suckla said that it is more a matter of how we operate as a board on the level of professionalism. Munn told DeHoff that as he had advised Polis last year, "it looks bad and we wish it hadn’t been done, but we can deal with it." Orr said that we don’t need a written policy, because we all know in our heart what is right and wrong. He said that if fellow Board members "are buying it," it is all right.
Board travel policies & national committee involvement. The Board used to travel freely to conferences in the past, when the state budget was larger. Wellburn said that some states restrict the number of trips. Gerwitz said that our Board’s budget for travel is $32,000 per year. The Board uses half the travel budget from the department. The travel budget is for our members to attend meetings and conferences in state, as well as attending NASBE conferences and other relevant conferences out of state. We can transfer some money from the Board’s operation budget to pay for our travel. Moloney said that the JBC is scrutinizing this expenditure. Suckla said that our board is more active than previous boards have been. She said that visiting our districts is part of our job. It is the out-of-state travel that is the question, because it is about half our budget. Polis said that our custom has been for the Chair and Vice Chair to determine if a member can go to an out-of-state meeting that he or she desires to attend. Moloney said that we can always see our members of Congress in the state, rather than in Washington DC. Wellburn strongly disagreed, because the Washington staff needs to hear the discussion, since the DC staff advises the Congressman, who doesn’t have time to read all the bills and do the research. She said that in her experience working years ago as a legislative aide to a member of Congress, Washington staff really took notice when people took the time to come to DC. Suckla said that the decision by our Leadership Committee to curtail our participation in March’s NASBE Legislative Conference was based on our budget crunch. They decided that we should send our newest members, one Democrat and one Republican, to the conference, but it turned out that neither Middleton nor Littleon could go, so instead it makes sense for Hudak and DeHoff to attend, since they are members of committees that will be meeting after the Legislative Conference. I made a strong plea about the importance of our Board attending the NASBE Legislative Conference, to help the "presence on the hill" aspect of the conference. I said that it isn’t fair for any of our members to have to miss our Board meeting to attend that conference. Suckla said that we have several charter school hearings set for March 9 and 10, which would be hard to rearrange. I said that I’m sure it wouldn’t be impossible to rearrange them, but that was not met with much agreement. Polis said that we will only need to cut our travel by about 15% next year. For the short-term, we have enough money for our members of NASBE committees to attend the rest of the meetings during this fiscal year, but it means only 2 people attending the Legislative Conference. Suckla said that we will work out an agreement over dinner about who that is and whether we will rearrange the March meeting to accommodate it.
Working with CDE and Commissioner (Board role vs. CDE role). The issue that precipitated this was the information about immigrants that was removed from the CDE website after Tancredo complained to the Governor. We read about this in the newspaper and wondered how it came to be removed from our website. Moloney said that his secretary got a phone call from the Governor’s office, and she passed the concern on to the appropriate people in CDE, who removed it. Apparently our staff agreed that a small portion of the information was illegal to post. Moloney said that he trusts staff in regard to what is on the CDE website. Polis said that it would be preferable for the Board to know about anything that is politically sensitive. He said that we can’t have other politicians deciding what is or is not on the website. Suckla said that the website isn’t the Board’s; it’s the department’s. I said that the Board and the department are essentially the same in this regard. DeHoff said that we wouldn’t want to micro-manage the website. Polis and Middleton said that it is different if it is a high-profile national figure and a charged political issue. Apparently, the information was developed by the Governor’s office and the Mexican consulate a few years ago. Wellburn said that it is always a good policy for the Board not to blind-side the Commissioner, and vice versa.
Legislative agenda. Suckla said that there is a question about the extent to which our members play a role in proposed legislation, testifying on a bill, etc. There is also a question about the role of staff versus the Board’s role. We don’t want to undermine what staff is already doing, and vice versa. Polis said that staff cannot play an advocacy role on legislation that the Board has not taken a position on. Moloney said that there is a good system within the department of assigning bills and following the developments on them; we can contact our Legislative Liaison, Byron Pendley, or the Chief of Staff, Karen Stroup, at any time to find out what is going on. Suckla said that we had a discussion about this last year, and we had agreed that if the Board isn’t in agreement on a bill, one of us would not testify on it. Wellburn confirmed that whenever we testify on a bill, we are not perceived as an individual citizen, but as the SBE. Orr said that this has been a "ticklish" issue as long as he has been on the Board. He said that we are much more effective when we speak as a group; he had a very bad experience 10 years ago when he first got on the Board, when both he and a fellow Board member testified on a bill with the opposite opinions, and it hurt the Board’s credibility with the Legislature for many years. I said that the issue we need to discuss isn’t this; we talked about this last year and long since agreed on this point. I said that this year’s issue is when the Board members need to testify on bills and when we don’t. I pointed out that there is a difference between us talking to fellow party members about legislative issues to determine what the party’s platform on the issue is, and us talking about bills. I said that I trust the other members to represent the Board’s position in general discussions about bills, and I would hope that they would trust me likewise. I assured the Board that I myself took very much to heart our decision last year about not testifying as an individual. Suckla assured me that the issue was raised because we have two new Board members who need to know what Wellburn recommends and that we need to let the other Board members, as well as staff, know when we hear important things about bills.
E-mail communication. We were wondering what the legality of our e-mail conversations are regarding legislation issues, in regard to the "sunshine law." Apparently, any e-mail conversations are subject to the sunshine law, and they should go through Karen Gerwitz, Director of Board Relations, rather than from one member to the other members directly.
Goal #1: Fulfill our role as the state’s educational authority. Objectives: Positively impact legislation; continue and strengthen our partnerships with the educational community; and optimize and responsibly exercise our authority. We agreed that we have done a good job in this goal. However, we could have done more on our partnerships with the educational community, such as with the Anchor Group. Moloney said that he notices that the Governor and the Legislature treat us as much more influential than ever before.
Goal #2: Maintain commitment to accountability reform and accreditation. Objectives: Implement a framework to address closing the achievement gap; provide adequate support to our field services; and provide leadership in the alignment of accountability reforms. We agreed that we have done well in this area, as well. Moloney said that the staff feels very supported by the Board in its field service work. I said that one area here I think we failed on is addressing the achievement gap, in so far as defining what a significant achievement gap is, as we were supposed to do according to the law in SB 254. Suckla said that our utilization of the "Munn doctrine" has helped us provide leadership on aligning the accountability reforms. I said that we didn’t really take the lead in addressing the interest in the education community to align the accountability systems; instead, CASE did it. DeHoff disagreed, saying that the CASE work had the intention of eliminating some aspects of accountability, not aligning them.
Goal #3: Improve the long-term financial stability of education funding. Objectives: Play a constructive role in developing a comprehensive school finance solution; continue our leadership in educating the public about the School Trust Lands; and participate in prioritization and protection of the budget. We agreed that we have done well on the last two, but I didn’t think we did well in the first item; I said that we didn’t play any role at all in the school finance issue. Polis said that without TABOR reform, we can’t do much.
Goal #4: Improve educator quality, recruitment, retention, and placement. Objectives: Increase access to alternative routes; improve quality and accountability of preparation programs; and review and revise teacher licensure, endorsement, and authorizations. I said that we have done a good job cleaning up our licensure rules to comply with NCLB, but I think we still need to do more on quality through staff development and on retention through a good induction program. The department did a good job on the recruitment issue with the website. DeHoff agreed that we still need to work on the licensure issue. Orr pointed out that our state was rated very high in teacher quality in one recent national evaluation.
Goal #5: Increase public engagement. Objectives: Increase engagement with and improve utilization of our advisory committees; publicize the efforts and activities of the SBE; and continue and strengthen our partnerships with the educational community. We agreed that we have done fairly well in this area, but there is still much to be desired in regard to our engagement with the public. Our members as individuals, however, have been very engaged with various educational groups.
Goal #6: Improve choice opportunities for Colorado students. Objectives: Increase access to and accountability of online programs; and establish principles of accountability to apply to all choice models. We agreed that fiscal constraints have prevented increase of access to online programs, although it is improving somewhat. We are moving slowly toward accountability for online programs. We did establish Board principles about school choice.
We agreed that this Strategic Plan, the first that the SBE has had, was a good first try and we did pretty well. I pointed out that there are many ways that the outside world "pushes" on us and distracts us from it, requiring us to make rules for legislation that passed and address other issues that come up. DeHoff, Orr, and Polis pointed out that having the plan has eliminated a lot of the chaos the Board experienced in earlier years of their terms and enabled us to be more directed, centered, and effective. We speak as one voice much more. Wellburn said that we should look at the rules we’re required to write and ask if they help us accomplish our strategic plan.
Goal #1: Fulfill our role as the state’s educational authority. Objectives: Lead the conversation about the evolution of the public education system; positively and pro-actively impact state and federal legislation; continue and strengthen our partnerships with and leadership of the educational community; and optimize and responsibly exercise our authority.
Goal #2: Maintain commitment to and support of accountability reform and accreditation. Objectives: Develop and advance a plan to close the achievement gap; prioritize, increase, and coordinate resources to support our field services; take leadership in the implementation, connection, and coordination of state standards; and advance the generation and utilization of relevant and objective data about public education.
Goal #3: Take a leadership role in improving the long-term financial stability of education funding. Objectives: Play a constructive role in developing a comprehensive school finance solution; continue our leadership in educating the public about the School Trust Lands; and participate in prioritization and protection of the budget, including libraries.
Goal #4: Improve educator quality, recruitment, retention, and placement. Objectives: Iimprove quality and accountability of preparation programs; and support professional development that increases student achievement through teacher quality.
Goal #5: [remove and instead apply public engagement throughout the other goals]
Goal #6: Improve choice opportunities for Colorado students. Objectives: Increase access to online programs; increase accountability of online programs through accreditation; and support implementation of principles of accountability for all choice models.
We talked about what changes we might consider for our meeting agendas. Suckla suggested that we spend a little time at the end of the meetings de-briefing and looking at the extent to which we addressed our goals. I raised the possibility of improving our public engagement by specifying a topic that could be disseminated in advance and discussed during public comment. The agreement was that rather than specifying it during public comment, we could put a topic on the agenda for Board discussion. I also raised a concern about how much time we spend on charter school appeal hearings. Polis pointed out that we are not obligated to hold a public hearing on the first appeal, and we could come up with a method for our legal counsel to help screen out those that can be dealt with through mediation.
Wellburn told us that when Margaret Spellings was sworn in as Secretary of Education, it was more like a "coronation." She made a derogatory comment to Wellburn about State Boards of Education. Wellburn responded that she knows Spellings won’t judge all SBEs by the Texas SBE, which Spellings had worked for. There continue to be challenges to SBE governance around the country. Wellburn worries about the culture of our nation, vesting authority in fewer people and pushing out lay leadership. New Mexico passed a constitutional amendment abolishing the SBE. The new Indiana Governor asked for the resignation of the entire SBE. The new Georgia Governor asked his whole board to resign, but did appoint a new one. There is a lot of turnover of leadership on SBEs. There is a lot of push-back on NCLB, in Utah by the Legislature and in Kansas by the SBE. There are 8 states looking at some form of muscle-flexing in regard to NCLB. NASBE got a grant to look at increasing the number of students on SBEs; currently 14 states have student members. NASBE is looking for funding to follow up on the study group’s report on athletics. There are 38 state members of NASBE; 3 states don’t have SBEs.
HB 1216 - School Improvement Action - This is the bill about changing the process of converting Unsatisfactory schools. The question we had discussed was whether we think the SBE should have a role in deciding what remedy should be used to deal with the school. I pointed out that even if the SBE isn’t written into the process in the bill, we are involved because of Accreditation. Munn said that we should ask for final approval over the improvement plan. Moloney said that would be a good suggestion, because currently the Governor disagrees with what Rep. Marshall wants to do (give the entire decision to the local district). We could bring Rep. Marshall and the Governor’s staff to broker a compromise.
SB 139 - Statewide Online Education - We agree that we oppose a statewide authority to handle the accountability of online schools. The bill also creates an ongoing funding stream for Colorado Online Learning (a supplemental online program done through CDE). We oppose taking 3% of PPOR to fund it. Again, we could offer to broker a discussion for a compromise. We agree that there should be a central place for information about online programs. We also would like the statutory authority to make rules for accreditation of online schools.
HB 1246 - Assessments for Students - This bill proposes to eliminate some IEP students from the SAR calculations.
HB 1164 - Achievement Exams in High School - This bill originally proposed to substitute the PLAN test for CSAP in 10th grade. It was amended to give districts a choice between these two tests. We agree that the CSAP is what we prefer, and we hope the bill is killed.
In October 2004, the SBE decided that we need to measure the achievement gap, because of the requirements of SB 03-254. The group that has worked on how to do this (consisting of a couple of SBE members, DeHoff and Munn, and some CDE staff that works with data) has decided to do it by disaggregating CSAP scores based on these factors: color, poverty, and range of disparity. The tools for measuring it will be Accreditation for districts and SB 254 for schools. A big issue for us is that our state has 4 categories of proficiency (Advanced, Proficient, Partially Proficient, and Unsatisfactory), but NCLB requires 3 categories (for which we combined Proficient and Partially Proficient). We will use the 4 levels, since that is our state form of measurement. There is an issue of how many gaps we find, because of all the subgroups and content areas. Munn asked if we could come up with one number for each school to determine the extent of their achievement gap(s). We discussed whether this is a good idea, since it could mask the lower achievement of some groups when there is higher achievement of others. I said that the most obvious way is to look at the subgroups that have a large difference from the average proficiency level at the school (or at the district or at the state). Munn suggested that we try several different ways to do it, run the numbers and look at them, and then decide. But he insisted that we have to find a way to "flag" achievement gaps. DeHoff said that achievement gaps among subgroups of students in a school would need to be determined differently from achievement gaps among schools in a district. Another issue is that we could find, for example, that Cherry Creek High School has a much larger achievement gap than Cole Middle School, but people would agree that our scarce resources would be better used going to Cole. I added that we need to look at the level of growth students are making over time, because that is a factor as well as their level of achievement. Bill Windler, Assistant Commissioner, said that graduation rates are another issue. Roscoe Davidson, Deputy Commissioner, pointed out that there are other factors we haven’t even mentioned.
Nevertheless, assuming that we find a good way to determine achievement gaps, the next problem is what our policy should be for dealing with them. Davidson said that SB 254 required the SBE to develop a program to help schools that we have identified as having a significant achievement gap (or are rated Unsatisfactory). He said that we have an obligation to do more than what is required by SB 254. SB 254 came with no funding, but since it is anticipated that there will be a correlation between the identified "gap" schools and the ones not making AYP under NCLB, we could possibly utilize Title I funds. However, there are no Title I high schools. DeHoff said that districts could reallocate some of their Title I funds, as well as the 1% of Amendment 23 funding that districts have to explain their use of. Munn expressed frustration with this. He said that the bill is about racism and classism, about why some black, Hispanic, and/or poor kids are not learning while their white and/or affluent classmates are. He suggested that the "program" could be something like teaching Spanish to the teachers at a school with a large percentage of Hispanic students who are performing poorly. Moloney asked what we do if there are 500 eligible schools. I suggested that we do it along the lines of a competitive grant program, which would enable us to select the eligible schools that we think we can help the most or which need help the most. Suckla suggested that if an eligible school is working with us on their achievement gap, we don’t "hammer them through Accreditation" on the achievement gap. If, however, districts do nothing about schools with large achievement gaps, we would address that through their Accreditation. Windler suggested that we consider having a school support team to work with the eligible schools.
Karen Gerwitz presented us with a revised draft of the report on the SARs that we have to give the Legislature on February 16. We discovered that the law does allow CDE a little flexibility – but only in ink color and white space. However, it does not allow us to change the content or the panel locations. Gerwitz rearranged the order of items presented in the report, based on our feedback earlier in the week, and we reviewed them. We suggested some additional minor revisions.
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