Gov. John Hickenlooper and former Govs. Roy Romer and Bill Owens joined forces this week to warn against legislation that amounts to an attack on accountability in education.
Senate Bill 223, which has passed the Senate with bipartisan support, would bar the state from penalizing any school or district with a high student opt-out rate in testing.
The bigger threat, which the governors also highlighted, is Senate Bill 257. That bill has also passed the Senate and would eliminate a mandate for standardized tests in ninth grade.
Ninth grade always has been a career-defining level for K-12 students in terms of academic achievement. Researchers say achievement in the freshman year is a valid predictor of a student’s future academic success, including graduation and college career.
State officials also say data from ninth grade are necessary to measure a student’s progress from elementary into high school.
Fortunately, there is a third bill that gets it right. House Bill 1323 reduces testing in some grades while retaining ninth-grade tests in English language arts and math. The original version of HB 1323, which we had criticized, would have made those tests optional.
The legislation reflects many ideas from the state’s Standards and Assessment Task Force that sought to cut testing while keeping a system that accurately measures performance. The bill eliminates tests for 11th and 12th grades, cuts out social studies testing and reduces tests in kindergarten.
It also would allow districts to provide paper-and-pencil tests and freeze the state rating system for schools and districts for the 2015-16 school year.
By contrast, SB 257 would cut the number of state tests to only one set of language arts and math during high school, plus the ACT. to test-run pilots for alternative testing systems if they met federal requirements. And it would postpone implementation of a law requiring 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation based on test scores.
Colorado has been a leader in education reform, and HB 1323 is a good compromise that keeps the assessment framework intact while still reducing tests.
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