By Van Schoales, DFER CO Advisory Board Member and the CEO of A+ Denver
I’ve spent the last two weeks sitting in a windowless Colorado State Board of Education boardroom listening to public testimony on the Common Core and Colorado’s district accountability system. The song I can’t get out of my head is the early 70’s tune by Stealers Wheels: “Stuck in the middle with you.” Despite having middling standards and, in many places, poor to middling results, those in our state at both ends of the political spectrum seem to think the solution is to paint a big happy face on everything and escape reality, rather than confront it head on.
The Centennial state has had a long history of education reformers on both sides of the political aisle working with thoughtful policy makers in the middle to tackle bold education reform. This coming year marks the 20th anniversary of Colorado’s charter school law. Back then Republican Colorado State Senator, Bill Owens, sponsored Colorado’s first charter schools bill while our Democratic Governor Romer signed it into law.
Colorado has been a leader on education reform because of our strong bi-partisan leadership. We were an early adopter of standards for student achievement in the early nineties led by a Democratic governor and shaped by teachers. Republican Governor Bill Owens led the effort to establish one of the first state based school and district accountability systems in 1999. Colorado passed one of the best teacher effectiveness laws in the nation (SB191) in 2010 led by Democrats like State Senator Mike Johnston, and in our last legislative session we committed to join the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessment consortia which was led by a broad bi-partisan education reform minded coalition.
In addition, the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) in collaboration with school boards, administrators and teacher associations designed a growth model that enables students, parents, educators and the community to measure how much students are learning compared to similar students across the state. This model is now being replicated by several states throughout the country.
Despite these reform efforts involving many stakeholders, Colorado’s commitment to accountability and education reform is now coming under assault. Two low-performing Denver area school districts (Mapleton and Westminster) recently called on the Colorado Department of Education to adjust their state ratings for schools. These districts have been labeled “Accredited with Priority Improvement Plan,” the equivalent of a D, which is the second-lowest rating that can be given by the state.
Only 16% of Mapleton’s high school math students were proficient and only 44% of students graduated last year. Westminster’s students did even worse on Math with only 7% reaching the state’s proficiency mark. Their graduation rate was at 64%, which is 10% below the state average. For comparison, Denver had a high school math proficiency rate of 25% and a graduation rate of 56%. Denver received the same rating as Mapleton and Westminster.
The districts claimed that they were being unfairly labeled as low-performers because of their large numbers of low-income and English-language learning students. Both districts testified that the current state accountability system (SB 163) unfairly punishes districts like theirs because it pulls out all sub-groups of students and makes it difficult for districts with such diversity to get rated well. Each superintendent used their school’s high poverty rates as a rationale for suggesting that they should be held to different standards.
These same superintendents that are now requesting they be held to different standards were active members of the Colorado Association of School Executives when they, with the Colorado School Board Association and Colorado Teacher Association, led the development of the current accountability system under Senate Bill 09-163. When the bill was introduced – and passed with near unanimous support – it had strong backing from then Democratic Governor Bill Ritter and a long list of Democrat and Republican sponsors. Unfortunately, the administrators in Mapleton and Westminster are now retreating from this accountability model.
Making sure the lowest performing subgroups of students improve is one of the primary reasons for having an accountability system in the first place. Our highest performing schools show that demography does not have to equal destiny. Colorado’s accountability system, which was enacted into law in 2009, already accounts for income. Moreover, a full 50% of a district’s rating is tied to student growth. If a school is considered a poor performer it has five years to move out of the lowest category before losing accreditation and suffering other sanctions.