a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District
a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District
The Board has become “paperless” with eBoard software. This means that we will no longer receive our Board books on paper. They will be on the CDE website, as they always have been, but now the Board members will use a laptop at Board meetings and through a wireless Internet connection, access the Board book, agenda, etc., through the CDE website. There is a screen in the Board Room, where we hold our meetings, that will display the agenda page or any attachments we are viewing. If any member of the public attending the meeting brings their own laptop and has wireless Internet access, they can use it too. It can be accessed by going to the CDE website, http://www.cde.state.co.us click on State Board of Education on the left, click on Meetings in the list on the bottom right, and then click on Meetings on the line on the upper left.
The SBE will consider amended rules for teacher licensure at the September meeting, because of changes in the statutes.
Because November is the deadline for the rules defining the calculation of dropouts/graduates, the SBE will consider proposed rules at the September meeting.
In the 2004 session, the Legislature cut funding for Read to Achieve from $16 million to $4 million per year, to begin in the 2006 fiscal year. That is this coming year. Because of the intermittent year, nobody remembered to address the issue, and school districts were surprised to discover this huge reduction in funding.
The School Finance Interim Committee will begin meeting on July 21 and will meeting several times through the end of September, at which time it will make recommendations on what should be changed in the School Finance Act.
HB 1246 created a study committee to determine the appropriateness of alternative assessments for special education students, specifically those who are too high-functioning to take the CSAP-A but too low for the regular CSAP. The SBE must appoint 8 members of this committee, which should be done tomorrow, since the committee must make recommendations by December. There were nominations for membership on this committee submitted from three parties: State Representative Judy Solano, the bill sponsor; the Consortium of Special Education Directors; and CDE staff. Commissioner Moloney recommended that the Board appoint the people nominated by CDE; when asked why the Consortium had submitted different names, he said that he didn’t know.
CDE staff are considering different options to allocate the $200,000 appropriated for civics education. Polis and Orr were at the meeting on civic education at the Education Commission of the States yesterday. Orr mentioned the importance of providing professional development that engages teachers on civic education. Polis said that CDE could use the money to sponsor regional or statewide meetings with teachers and policymakers, and ECS is willing to provide free technical assistance to the SBE to do this.
The Board will be asked to approve a payment of $181,000 from the Contingency Reserve to pay for repairs to a school in the Woodlin School District that was damaged from the recent hail and heavy rain. The Legislature had zeroed out this fund, so there is not enough money in it to pay the full amount needed. Denver School District owes $3 million to the fund for the loan given to make up for the district’s loss in property taxes from United Airlines’ bankruptcy, but there is no timeline for repayment.
CDE school finance staff said that the state is far behind in paying into the school capital construction and renovation fund to pay off the Giardino lawsuit. The state should have paid $90 million by now, but the last couple of years it has not made the full $20 million per year payment; this last year the state paid only $5 million. If Referendum D passes (and Referendum C, which has to also pass for D to be in effect), it will pay off the entire $147 million still due. However, the Giardino settlement is only a small portion of actual construction needs. It was agreed that the SBE needs to keep this issue at the forefront.
We will work in August and September on our legislative agenda for next year, but we might have another special meeting for this purpose, like we did last year.
The Board will be reviewing rules next month to deal with the process for when we put a district on Watch or Probation. Right now, no one person makes a decision about putting a district on Watch or Probation, and the process will add some consistency and equity in the decisions, as well as an appeals process. The timeline for putting districts on Probation will be amended to give CDE more flexibility to work with districts to make improvements. For the purposes of monitoring and technical assistance, there is more cross-unit cooperation in CDE between the Accreditation staff and the Title I unit for districts not making AYP. This is working well; the Harrison and Miami-Yoder school districts, for example, are showing improvements. The new financial indicator is affecting Accreditation, and a couple of districts are on Watch for financial reasons; this has helped CDE work with those districts to improve their financial situation. Byron Pendley will work with Region Managers to arrange technical assistance in financial matter, rather than through Vody Herrmann, because she is too busy. Gary Sibigtroth oversees the Exception Student Services Unit (special education) and has met with Terri Connelly, the Interim Director of the unit, to work cooperatively on technical assistance between IDEA, Title I, and the Regional Managers. They are working to simplify paperwork and increase choices and meaningful involvement of parents.
Recently there was an article in the paper that districts are having their funding for NCLB cut. Windler handed out a summary, which shows the exact amount of funding for NCLB. Some districts are getting good increases, especially the larger school districts that have had an increase in poor children. However, some small districts are having a decrease because of their demographic shifts. We received a list of all the schools in the state, indicating which schools receive Title I funding, whether that is school-wide or targeted-assistance funding. Districts determine how to allocate their Title I funding and whether schools are on school-wide or targeted-assistance; however, if a school has over 75% of its students on free/reduced lunch, it MUST receive Title I funding.
In the proposed federal budget certain programs are likely to receive funding increases, some to have level funding, and some to be cut. One federal program that was proposed to be cut entirely is Even Start, which was not successful in some other states, but has been in Colorado. Next month we will receive some data about its effectiveness in our state.
Windler gave us a revised version of the “flow chart” on how CDE and SBE will work with various committees and organizations. The Hub Committee has been moved up to the top of the chart as a direct advisory to the SBE. The Committee of Practitioners will meet with the SBE during one of the next two Work Sessions, probably in September, since we’ll be in Rifle for our August meeting. Changes in IDEA due to reauthorization will impact our planning within CDE. Windler asked for some help in this regard; I suggested that he contact CSEAC (Colorado Special Education Advisory Committee). He said that perhaps CSEAC should also consult with the Hub Committee.
HUDAK: I reported on my NASBE meeting of the Governmental Affairs Committee. At that meeting, I received a press release reporting that Florida was allowed by the USDE to have its schools rated A and B (like our schools rated Excellent and High) to be deemed to have made AYP. [Moloney argued about whether this was something we should consider, since Florida’s AYP rate is so very low. I said that if the principle of the thing is that these schools count, it should apply in our state as well as Florida’s, upon which our system of accountability is based. DeHoff argued that it wouldn’t take into account the achievement gap, but I said that Florida’s A and B schools don’t either.] I reported that NASBE is asking states to share with one another which areas of NCLB they have received flexibility on. I also said that we received a copy of the lawsuit against the U.S. about NCLB, which says that NCLB has a provision allowing states to not have to comply if they do not receive full funding; the lawsuit is based on the complaint that the plaintiffs have not received full funding, but were still penalized by USDE for non-compliance. I reported on my meeting with Salazar’s staff, who are very well informed about NCLB and Colorado’s education issues. Salazare is sponsoring one of 18 bills to reform NCLB. His staff said that these bills are “going nowhere,” but will set a precedent for when NCLB is reauthorized. I reported that I attended the organizational meeting following up the Eligible Facilities Educaiton Task Force, which is organizing a committee to coordinate efforts to help the facilities’ effectiveness and funding. I reported on the highlights of Secretary Spellings’ speech at the National PTA Convention, which focused on the importance of parent involvement.
DEHOFF: Was at the NASBE Study Group on Value-Added. They had a session in the morning with people from NEA and AFT discussing pay-for-performance plans. The AFT representative supported the idea, but the NEA representative didn’t. Someone from USDE spoke about a work group being formed to study longitudinal growth; NASBE urged them to allow a representative from NASBE to be a member. Hopes that the study group’s work will be useful as a guideline for that. Munn and he were at a release of the Fund for Colorado’s Future study on student mobility. It shows that we could be making better use of student identification numbers to track students.
MUNN: Has been talking to various groups about our proposal on closing the achievement gap. Talked to John Hefty, Executive Director of CASE, about including CASE in our work on this issue. There has been a lot of interest; people are trying to digest what the Board decided last month. Is excited about DPS’s new superintendent, Michael Bennet, who is willing to meet with the SBE or at least Munn and CDE staff and wants to talk about Reading First. The Independence Institute is doing a study on reporting discipline/violence incidents. Is confused about our position on the Sheridan School District’s issue of funding college courses and wonders if it is different from how we see what DPS has done. [Moloney said that the districts are doing different things, so the School Finance Unit will study it in more detail.]
MIDDLETON: Attended the CASE conference after our Retreat. CASE members were interested in our perspective on how to work on high school reform issues and partnering with us on closing the achievement gap. Met with Brighton School District, which invited the community to discuss high school reform. Is dealing with P-16 issues regarding the grant that the Governor applied for from the National Governors Association to work on this issue.
LITTLETON: Poured over NASBE’s recent report on Adolescent Literacy. Attended two new charter schools’ open houses in District11.
ORR: Was invited to attend the ECS Civics Conference the last two days. ECS gave grants to South Carolina, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin for civic engagement work. South Carolina said that they had met with Chambers of Commerce, which gave a list of qualities of workers that they would like to see, such as punctual. Thinks that meeting with the business community here would be a good idea. But it’s hard to evaluate success in this area. There was a lot of good discussion at ECS. Would like us to be innovative and not just use our $200,000 for one program. Maybe regional conferences around the state with students and others. It was agreed that unless teachers are excited about civics education, it won’t happen. We can’t just teach civics; we need to show how it is incorporated into various aspects of life. Some states put self-evaluations of civics education on their school report cards. Need incentives rather than punishments for civics education. Can’t test it. Was at the Business Roundtable Colloquium in Vail, where for the first time he heard it said that the system of public education needs to change.
POLIS: Nothing to report.
SUCKLA: Missed the last CASB Board meeting, but discussed with the CASB President our new definition of a significant achievement gap and the list of schools that will result. They understand why the list must be generated, but they are concerned about the consequences of schools being on the list. Would like to be consulted as we go forward in this area. There is a new superintendent. In Montezuma-Cortez School District; they put together a barbeque just for him to meet Suckla. It is a big deal for that district to have a new superintendent. Their former superintendent is now working for CASB on how to conduct searches for a new superintendent. We have seen tremendous interest in the $200,000 for civics; likes the idea of regional conferences. Maybe we could use some of the money to help districts attend the conferences. Reminded us that any of us can ask for an item to be on the agenda; just ask her, because it’s the agenda for all of us. Had lots of requests for participation on NASBE’s study groups next year; we will cover it during the General Discussion item on today’s agenda.
GERWITZ: Attended a conference of NSPRA (National School Public Relations Association), since she’s the state COSPRA president. There were 700 people there, with 35 from Colorado. Our state won several awards. Our newspaper supplement won for Best Distinguished Project. The Chapter Award went to us for our successful chapter. NSPRA will be holding a conference about public engagement, integrating with the community, and strategic planning; it would be helpful for SBE members to attend as well. It will be next year in Chicago. The CLASS conference is coming up, in Breckenridge, July 24-27. Senator Brandon Schaffer would like to draft some legislation on school trust lands. Thanked us for our patience with eBoard; hopes the public agrees that it’s helpful. Would like to hold a community event while we’re in Rifle next month.
SB 91 requires us to calculate a uniform method for districts to determine their dropout and graduation rates. Staff’s opinion is that the bill arose because of lack of confidence about how CDE is calculating these, since our numbers come out higher than some other groups’ calculations. There will be a committee working on drafting the rules to implement SB 91; our rules are due by November 15. We currently do our calculation by taking the number of students completing 8th grade and comparing it with the number who graduate 4 years later, taking into account the number of students who transferred in and out during the intervening time (based on end-of-year counts). The Education Trust says that to make the calculation good, it must include a cohort rate as well as a tracking of mobile students. We do use a cohort rate, and we have been doing the latter for the last two years. In North Carolina, they count the students beginning and ending 12th grade; that will always yield a higher rate than tracking from 9th grade. SB 91 requires 5 different rates: continuing education rate, dropout rate, graduation rate, mobility rate, and promotion rate.
Because of NCLB, we have added several subgroups to our calculations of dropout rates. We count students who leave public schools but go to private schools, GED programs, or home schools. [DeHoff questioned whether we should count students who transfer to non-public schools, because they have dropped out of the public school system. Munn said that this is confusing the issue.] CDE allows districts to “check” CDE’s calculations and look at every individual student’s code; thus, the data has been greatly “cleaned up,” resulting in a much higher dropout rate since it is much more accurate to account for students who, for example, say they are transferring to another district but never show up there or anywhere else in the state, as well as students who previously had been double-counted (when they moved in and out and back in to districts). Students who transfer to other states (or countries) don’t count as dropouts. A problem is students who violate the compulsory education law – they can’t be dropouts in a sense because it is illegal for them to drop out. We use July 1 - June 30 as the year, and the count date for calculating dropout rates is June 30. Therefore, another problem is determining at what point a student is a dropout, because there can be incorrect data if the count is done at the end of the school year and the student’s parent has already taken them on a vacation. We differentiate between a graduation rate and a completer rate (for students who, for example, get certificates of attendance but didn’t fulfill all the courses required for graduation). CDE staff will bring us a draft of proposed rules for this at the September meeting, and we will be discussing it every month until we complete the new rules.
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