TCAP … to be replaced by PARCC (Denver Post file).
Coming off a month of political and legal drama surrounding state-mandated assessments, Colorado Education Commissioner Robert Hammond delivered a clear message Thursday to district superintendents — prepare to make a “good faith effort” to test every student and keep good records when parents choose to hold their children out of them.
Hammond’s letter to superintendents comes a day after the state Board of Education
Those are the next-generation math and English tests districts will begin administering next month, part of Colorado’s membership in a multi-state testing effort called the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.
Twenty Colorado districts — the number keeps climbing — petitioned the state for waivers to the first half of the PARCC tests after the state board voted last month to make them available. But the state Attorney General crushed that notion, writing in a formal opinion that .
Here’s an excerpt from Hammond’s letter, laying out Wednesday’s board action and the ramifications:
“The board voted to allow continued submissions of waivers by districts and to table any decision on those waivers until the next special or regular meeting of the board. Since the board did not grant waivers from the performance-based component of PARCC, districts should continue preparations for the administration of the upcoming assessments.
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Hammond also wrote that the department — as signaled at Wednesday’s meeting — will seek an amendment to Colorado’s current Elementary and Secondary Education Act waiver with the federal Department of Education.
Steve Durham, right, led the charge on the state Board of Education to give districts PARCC waivers (Denver Post file).
On a similar topic, the state board discussed a proposed resolution that would instruct all school districts to honor parents’ rights to hold their children out of mandated tests. The proposal from Republican board member Steve Durham cited reports that some school districts are “threatening” parents who wish to exercise that right.
During Wednesday’s meeting, Durham said he has received complaints from parents about districts pressuring them to have their students take the tests. He cited one principal — unnamed — who allegedly told a parent that his or her child would not attend school for at least 30 days if the parent opted the student out of the tests.
The resolution, though, is not due for a vote until next month. An attempt to fast-track it would have required anonymous board support, and Democrats Jane Goff and Angelika Schroeder did not go for it. Goff, for her part, explained that she was concerned that the language of the resolution was not positive enough. She volunteered to help work on it.
Durham replied: “This isn’t designed to be sweetness and light. This is designed to make sure parents have an understanding of their rights and district should understand that itap really not their job to treat parents in the way that was described by the parents that were here.”
The board also was briefed Thursday by an Attorney General’s office representative on what would need to happen for the state to abandon the Common Core math and English standards that are folded into the Colorado state standards.
The long and the short of it — .
In other words, , it’s not in the cards.
