After an earlier attempt to pare back state standardized tests stalled, the Senate Education Committee on Thursday approved more sweeping legislation that opens the door to local tests and puts off a requirement tying teacher evaluations to student academic growth.
After nearly six hours of testimony on five testing bills, the committee voted 8-1 to advance Senate Bill 257, which has become the signature testing reduction bill in the Republican-controlled chamber.
Although SB 257 has bipartisan support, its prospects are cloudy in the Democrat-controlled House, .
Testing reduction has proved extremely difficult to advance in the legislature.
Although there is widespread agreement that testing should be reduced, several bills have been bogged down by divides over how much to cut, the potential impact on the state’s accountability system and more.
Republican Owen Hill and Democrat Mike Merrifield are the primary sponsors of SB 257, which would streamline school readiness and literacy tests for young students, test students only once in English and math during high school, cut social studies tests, and provide paper-and-pencil alternatives to online tests.
The bill would preserve mandatory ACTs for 11th-graders, a test that is not required by the federal government but has wide support.
“We need more than anything to have tests that we trust and we see the value in and respect the results,” Hill said.
Merrifield said the legislation is a necessary response to “this flood of testing, this tsunami of testing” drowning out “the joy of learning.”
Sen. Michael Johnston, D-Denver, was the sole “no” vote.
A divisive piece of the bill would allow districts to test-run pilots for local testing and accountability systems.
“We need to have that local control; we need to have that flexibility,” said Bethany Drosendahl, a Colorado Springs parent who served on a state testing task force but opposed its final report. “We need to widen, not narrow.”
Republicans wary of state regulation champion the pilot system, while education reform advocates testified it would result in a patchwork system making comparisons impossible.
The bill also would postpone for another three years a requirement from a 2010 law that 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation be based on student growth on tests scores.
That mandate already has been delayed one year and is set to go into effect in 2015-16.
Districts have the option to do that now, and some have.
Luke Ragland, of the business group Colorado Succeeds, which backs education reform, testified that part of the bill would include “smart reductions” but the organization cannot support the bill because of local testing and accountability components.
The Senate’s first bipartisan attempt at cutting testing foundered after criticism it did not go far enough.
In the House, the pending testing measure would cut state tests for 11th- and 12th-graders, make ninth-grade state testing optional and streamline readiness and literacy testing.
Co-sponsor Rep. Jim Wilson, R-Salida, said he fears the Senate bill will die in the House, the House bill will die in the Senate and “students will have to endure yet another year of excessive assessments.”
Also Thursday, the Senate Education Committee voted 5-4 along party lines for a GOP bill to drop the Common Core standards and pull the state out of the PARCC testing consortium. That bill is expected to be killed in the House.
Eric Gorski: 303-954-1971, egorski@denverpost.com or twitter.com/egorski
