The Colorado State Board of Education has denounced sweeping attempts by key legislative Democrats to “overturn the educational accountability reforms that have been painstakingly built over the last 14 years.” One board member called the Democrat legislation a “flight from accountability.”
In a letter Monday to Gov. Bill Ritter, Board of Education Chair Pamela Jo Suckla issued a stern warning about four pending bills that essentially would gut the Colorado Student Assessment Program tests, also called CSAPs.
The student-achievement tests are used in tracking the progress of students as well as the performance of schools statewide and have been central to making the case for other education reforms.
"If these four bills became law, they would decisively overturn the educational accountability reforms that have been painstakingly built over the last 14 years." |
“(B)y going in this direction, we would be turning our backs on the hard-won growth and progress our state has shown over 14 years within an accountability system that has won national praise,” Suckla wrote.
“Basically, if these four bills became law, they would decisively overturn the educational accountability reforms that have been painstakingly built over the last 14 years by Governors Romer and Owens and bipartisan majorities of the General Assembly,” she wrote. “In addition to jeopardizing hundreds of millions of federal aid dollars, they would also fatally undermine the database that is essential to the very promising longitudinal program you recently signed into law.”
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Read the State Board of Education's letter to Democrat leaders |
The letter to Ritter also was directed via memo to those legislative Democrats – including Senate Education Committee Chair Sue Windels of Arvada and House Education Committee Chair Michael Merrifield of Manitou Springs – who are behind the bills.
At issue are measures with primarily Democrat backing that would, among other things, eliminate the CSAP tests for high-schoolers and the writing portion of the tests for all grades, effectively ending much of the program. One of the bills also would change the date on which the remaining tests are administered, which the board says would render moot the test results for statistical purposes for all the years before the change. Another bill allows parents to opt a child out of the tests.
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State Board of Education Vice Chair Bob Schaffer |
Additionally, a proposal exempting special-needs children’s CSAP scores from overall calculations in rating school performance would cost the state $136 million in federal funding, Suckla charged.
Assistant Senate GOP leader Nancy Spence, of Centennial, who is the ranking Republican on the Senate Education Committee, said the bills that dramatically cut back on the use of CSAPs are “an absolute disaster.”
“You might as well not even give the CSAP test,” Spence said.
Board of Education Vice Chair Bob Schaffer echoed that sentiment and said the legislation could throw Colorado out of compliance with federal education standards, putting the state’s eligibility for special-needs funding at risk.
“This is a flight from accountability,” Schaffer said. “It jeopardizes a massive amount of federal funds coming back to Colorado and could harm children.”