a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District

SUCKLA: Thanked the Board for our work over the past two months, when she was absent. Complimented us on our presentation to the JBC. Mentioned that Commissioner Jones and Mary Frances Nevans work extremely long hours and work nights and weekends. She really appreciated receiving the Educational Policy Leader award at the CASB conference; it was very humbling.

DEHOFF: Attended the CASB conference at the Broadmoor in December. Had a chance to meet with local board members and administrators. One highlight was a conversation he and Elaine Berman had with Adams County District 50 on reinventing schools as well as other reform efforts that legislators such as Senator Groff intend to propose. It’s a whole different way of looking at education. Some of the ideas came out of what has been going on in Alaska; they have been working with Roger Sampson from the Education Commission of the States, because he was the head of the Alaska DOE at that time. Believes that opportunities like that help our relationship. Is looking forward to seeing what waivers will be requested. Went to Evergreen High School for the presentation of its national Blue Ribbon award for academic achievement; it is one of very few schools in the country to receive the award. The JBC hearing went pretty well; we had a good exchange and there was nothing too contentious.

LITTLETON: Attended the quarterly CSEAC meeting as the Board’s liaison. Went with Pat Chlouber to two schools in the Pikes Peak region that were also Blue Ribbon winners. Attended the Dropout Summit and went to a Civics Education conference that had some really good sessions, as well as some that were "interesting." Commended CDE on the quick response to questions she had about some of the sessions at the Civics conference and about CDE’s new process of assessing professional development. The Calhan School District had a veterans breakfast; it was a big deal, with a band performance and speakers. Attended the JBC meeting with colleagues. Was the first SBE "guinea pig" to have a community meeting for input on the content standards. They were expecting about 55 people but over 70 came; it was an exciting event. Some overarching themes emerged. One was that the business community doesn’t know about standards or how it relates to them; however, business people know what they need in employees’ skills. They expressed a lot of concern about the need for a good work ethic and honesty.

HUDAK: I reported that I have spent a lot of time working with my task force on a bill to fix many of the problems with eligible facilities; I explained that the bill will try to coordinate educational records and curriculum for the facilities throughout the state, as well as improve pay and benefits for teachers in facilities by making them public employees. I attended the final meeting of the P-20 Council and noted that Governor Ritter said: "You cannot talk about a vision for Colorado without talking about education." Along with a number of other people, I attended a meeting to discuss what the details of the BEST (Building Excellent Schools Today) proposal should be. I also attended the CASB conference and JBC hearing. I went to the Dropout Recovery Forum, which I thought was excellent. I was invited by Hope Online Academy to tour a couple of their schools; it was very interesting to see the "learning centers" first-hand. I have been going to meetings of the Safe Schools Partnership, which will have a bill to put school resource centers around the state to help districts with information on school safety and preventing violence and bullying. I was appointed by the Governor to the Teacher Quality Commission, which had its first meeting; not much substance to report yet. I attended a community meeting on "Reinventing District 50" but didn’t hear them say anything about needing waivers from state law to implement the program, in contrast to DeHoff’s impression that they will be asking for some.

[No other SBE members had a report.]

The "Anchor Group" of leaders from CASE, CASB, and CEA would like to have dinner with us as they have done in recent years, on March 4 or 5 or April 9. The SBE will probably have a webinar next month on changes to the e-Board system that are being made. Mary Frances Nevans, our Director of State Board Relations, said that she didn’t realize how much work there would be to do during the holiday season.

JO O’BRIEN: CDE is collecting information on the adequacy of state standards to comply with HB 07-1118. At the SBE’s workshops presented at the CASB fall conference, we asked how modern and rigorous they should be. The results from those meetings, as well as future ones, is being collected. Peggy Littleton had a standards meeting with the community in Colorado Springs, and next week Bob Schaffer and Karen Middleton will be hosting one each (they will be done in each SBE member’s district over the next few months). Business and community leaders will have been asked this question at all these community meetings: What should minimum high school graduation guidelines include? The stakeholders from whom to gather this input are not specified directly in the law. We are aiming to get input from students also. The Advisory Council intends to work and coordinate with the SBE members for future meetings. Their recommendations are required to come to us by May 1.

MARK STEVENS: CDE will be testing a new electronic newsletter, "The Scoop," to communicate with outside people. The new design for the CDE website is on hold for a few extra weeks. About 3000 pages are being "templated." We will have to freeze the website to do the behind-the-scenes work to go live with the new one. In regard to the delay, the Commissioner wants it done right before it goes live. Audio segments of SBE meetings will be posted on the web by topic. CDE is looking to hire someone to replace Tanya Price, as Assistant Communications Director, since she’s becoming the CDE Chief of Staff (because Karen Stroup-Mock is Deputy Commissioner and can’t do that job anymore).

Matt Gianneschi, the Governor’s education policy advisor, and Mary Kay Hogan, Ritter’s chief policy person, attended the SBE meeting to say that the Governor has an education agenda that he wanted us to know about. He will be speaking about them during his State of the State address, so he wanted us to have a sense of his direction and an understanding of his intentions. After the P-20 Council’s recommendations, our request to review all the standards, and the review of admissions requirements by CCHE (Colorado Commission on Higher Education), this is the time to talk about how we can work jointly and create linkages. We need to make the content standards fit with admissions standards, so we don’t have to relay on seat time or high school courses. The Governor’s objective is to increase the graduation and college enrollment rates. He doesn’t want us to continue to work separately with different priorities. He understands that it is the SBE’s prerogative to weigh in on legislation, and he commended us on our willingness to work together and think about new ways to address the challenges of preparing students for workforce and college. It might not be an easy road, but the critical difference from the past is that CCHE is willing to look at their part of the continuum. Suckla pointed out that we have been asking for this for a long time. Littleton and DeHoff echoed that sentiment. DeHoff emphasized that the Governor and Legislature need to keep us involved and not forget about us.

Barkis reminded us about our first of weekly legislative meetings. She will send us information on Fridays about the bills we might discuss on Monday. Some legislators have been asked for permission to discuss bills they will be carrying. Tuesday night we will have dinner with the legislators from the House and Senate Education Committees; Thursday afternoon we will make a presentation to the Joint Education Committee, which will require us to have discussion and planning for it on Monday. Barkis has about 15 drafts of bills and knows of other items that are not drafted but will be coming and will be really big. We will have the opportunity to play a big role in the drafting of the latter.

The Technical Advisory Panel for the Longitudinal Analysis of Student Assessment (TAP) has been directed by HB 07-1048 to recommend to the SBE a statistical model appropriate for measuring student academic growth and an improvement award method. The TAP is seeking approval for a Notice of Rule Making on January 10, 2008 (tomorrow). The growth model will show how much growth students make in one year, what one year’s growth is, and how much growth is necessary for them to be Proficient or Advanced on CSAP. The TAP and CDE intend to submit recommended rules to the SBE on or before January 31 for the hearing to take place on February 14. 　An official report on the recommended statistical model will also be submitted to the SBE on that date. It is anticipated that both emergency and permanent rules may be promulgated at the SBE meeting on March 6.

The intention of the legislation is to make longitudinal growth the cornerstone of accountability and to enhance the system of accountability by using assessment data. The bill asks us to do something we have never been able to do: come up with a school-wide summary of student growth. We need to measure gains students make, even when they don’t move up to a higher proficiency "category" (such as Unsatisfactory to Partially Proficient). The intent is for it to be used for the SARs, but also with other accountability purposes such as AYP. HB04-1433 started the whole process. We will need the new model when the targets under AYP will become so rigorous is that most schools and districts will only be able to make AYP under Safe Harbor. HB 1048 specifies a very specific type of longitudinal model be used; we are working on a bill to clean up that language so the TAC’s idea of accomplishing the goal of the bill with a slightly different model will be possible (changing to a "mixed-effects" model rather than a "hierarchical linear" one. It is very technical and complicated to describe. This month Secretary Spellings made an announcement about AYP. There had been a pilot for 10 states (of which there were 8 states selected) on using a longitudinal method. Now any state that is interested can apply to be in the pilot; we will be doing that. Not many states are in a condition to be able to do this, as we are, having student ID numbers and yearly assessments in place.

We were presented with a review of the model, but it is not ready for formal introduction yet. It cannot be used for progress monitoring to help teachers in the classroom on a daily basis; the hope is that it will inform the discussions that teachers have with parents. To quantify growth, the TAC used the model used for pediatric growth, which is in percentiles, or "normative descriptions." In this case, kids are compared with all the state’s students in their grade. The growth will be described with growth percentiles. In putting the growth amounts to together by school, if the distribution of students were equitable, every school would be in the 50^th percentile. But another factor is the "status" of the school (overall achievement level of the school, based on whether more or less than a certain percent of students are Proficient or Advanced). Therefore, a growth determination has to be done in terms of both. The categories are: (1) Excelling - high status, high growth; (2) Sustaining - high status, low growth; (3) Improving - low status, high growth; and (4) Underperforming - low status, low growth. I expressed concern about the aspect of socio-economic status in this picture; Turner said that we have ways to show that and compare schools at the same socio-economic level.

CDE will eventually be putting together a way for people to access this information over the Internet on a student, school, and district level.

Jones said that he had charged Deputy Commissioner Ken Turner with developing this model this year. He said that it’s been worked on for a long time, and it is time to make it happen. He said it needs to be easy to understand and defensible.

Jo O’Brien presented a demonstration of the assessment unit's latest enhancement to state tests targeted at Colorado parents, called the "Colorado Parent Network." Parents will have access to an online, password-protected information tool to access their children’s CSAP, CSAPA, and CELA scores. It will have parent-friendly language about the content standards and the assessments in several languages. It will be funded through the department with money previously allocated for field-testing (which has already been accomplished). In May, CDE will take this out to districts and parent groups for explanations, demonstrations, and further input, as well as PTA, CASE, CASB, CEA, and the press. When we have the next CSAP press conference in late July or early August, the network will have its debut. Florida is the only other state that has something like this. When parents view CSAP information, it will show specific content areas and the sub-content area scores. It will have these things customized for all possible results, so that parents can access suggested activities that parents can do to strengthen their children in areas they might be weak in. It also can access more specific information about the content standards and their benchmarks and assessment frameworks. In addition, it has links to additional resources. Finally, it has everyday activities to help in different areas. Suckla suggested we put information targeted to parents of kids in preschool and grades K-2. Littleton said we should add CBLA data. I said we could include Results Matter data too. Schaffer asked how secure the parent access code would be, to ensure privacy. The answer is that parents will be provided with an invitation code, like a PIN number, which they can then customize once they enter; there will be a FERPA statement asking the parent to certify that they are authorized to view this information. The data in the network is hosted by entities that have experience with secure websites. A policy will be developed to deal with circumstances in which the child has divorced parents with joint custody, or a parent is in jail, etc.

CEDAR (Colorado Education Data Analysis and Reporting) is an on-line information portal for authorized school districts and CDE personnel. Accounts are now set up for each Board Member. Dan Domogala from CDE made a live presentation showing how to log into CEDAR and run various reports. The mission of CEDAR is providing secure access to accurate and reliable information for enhanced decision-making. It is a data retrieval and analysis tool. There are currently about 280 named user accounts in 167 districts. A maximum of 2 users per district is allowed. There are specific restrictions for each user ID, such as access to the whole district versus just a classroom. Data that is available in CEDAR is from CSAP, AYP, and Accreditation reports.

When you log in, you see a number of folders – "public folders." For example, in the folder "Achievement Gap," one can access a number of reports in PDF format, such as "Minority & White State Comparison on CSAP Reading and Math 2007." When done looking at a report, click on the "return" link at the top right. There is a CEDAR e-mail address for concerns or questions: cedar@cde.state.co.us. We will be able to select individual districts and get the report for them. For "Matched Cohort" reports, you first need to select the content area to look at (Reading, Writing, or Math).

The CEDAR homepage is https://cedar.cde.state.co.us. CDE has done over 40 regional trainings around the state. They help teach people to use the system as well as the data. They will be setting up a focus group to get further feedback to improve the system.

Keith Glenn from CDE provided an update on the new Data Dictionary project required by HB07-1320 and gave a brief demonstration. It was implemented in November. They are working on identifying redundancies of data collections and standardizing data names. There are about 100 collections being done at CDE currently with about 6000 pieces of data. They are looking at where the data comes from and where it goes, to improve the process. They will notify anyone affected by any changes made in the future. The feedback mechanism is to ask questions and make suggestions for improvement. The Data Dictionary is openly available, on the CDE homepage in the middle of the page. It has a key-word search, alphabetic search, and collection search.

Ken Turner, Jeanette Cornier, and Pamela Ice provided a brief overview of the process implemented for Online Learning Rulemaking to prepare the SBE for the hearing on the Emergency Rules on January 10 (tomorrow). The rules establish Quality Standards for Online Programs, which include the timelines and processes for application, reporting, certification, and monitoring of online programs in Colorado. These rules and procedures are required by SB 07-215 to be passed by the SBE by January 1, 2008 (we will be a few days late). The statute requires an 11-member Advisory Board to be appointed by the Governor; this has only recently occurred. The Advisory Board is required to consult with the Online Division at CDE on the establishment of temporary standards to provide written assurances for the notification of the location of new "Learning Centers." These standards will apply to any agreement entered into by a multi-district online program and a school district. Approval for the location of a proposed Learning Center is contingent on any and all conditions listed therein. The Advisory Board is also required to provide a report to the SBE annually on or before February 1 on the progress of the Online Division at CDE, the appropriateness of existing policies for online programs, and the operations and activities of online programs. The Advisory Board is required to meet at least once every three months to monitor the progress of the Online Division and appropriateness of existing policies. In addition, they make recommendations to the Online Division regarding documentation of enrollment, demographics, and measures for determining longitudinal academic growth.

The Online Learning Division held two meetings of stakeholders and four of the Advisory Board. In addition, they took input over the CDE website. Next month we will receive language for the permanent rules. The Advisory Board had a lot of support from CDE staff members Pam Ice, Jeanette Cornier, Ryan DeHerrera, and Tony Dyl. SB 07-215 was the guide; it is fairly specific. The challenge has been that although everyone wants accountability, they want to allow for innovation, and they don’t want anything more rigorous than is required for regular schools. They tried to be thorough and get as much input as possible. The Advisory Board offered the opportunity for public comment at their meetings. They asked for input from experts who attended the meetings. They looked at the reports from the CDE Task Force (chaired by Jared Polis and Nancy Spence), the Trujillo Commission, and CDE staff. Members visited online schools and learning centers. They continuously got feedback from the members. Serving on the Advisory Board is a 3-year commitment.

We still need to have a definition of a "complete educational program" – a recommendation for that should be to the SBE by June. Also, they will report to us about what supplementary programs provide and what the accountability for them should be. Finally, their report will include information on the state of all the online programs in Colorado.

Several SBE members expressed concern about the rapid pace of change in online learning and the inevitability of the rules not answering questions that will come up in the future. I questioned whether the rules we pass tomorrow should define a "learning center" when we don’t have a definition of a "complete educational program." Jones said that there is still disagreement on the issue, and everyone won’t agree with everything we decide.

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