Tag Archives: assessments

Despite valiant efforts, I was unable to find a nice, neat, uplifting Friday education story for us to talk about today. That’s kind of a good thing, though. Pressing issues like the Jeffco recall-oisseurs’ inability to tell the truth have distracted us from a large education policy discussion backlog. Today we’re going to nibble on that backlog by taking a look at the latest developments for the tortured PARCC test. Faithful readers will recall that my policy friends Ben DeGrow and Ross Izard published a joint op-ed late last legislative session calling on Colorado’s policymakers to reach a compromise on the testing issue—and to seriously reevaluate the state’s use of the much-maligned PARCC exam. The testing compromise happened (and little else), but Colorado remains in the PARCC testing consortium for now. Meanwhile, PARCC seems to be entering a death spiral of sorts.

Last month, we kicked off the 2015 legislative party together. I promised it would be an exciting year, and that has certainly been the case. But I may have been wrong about where that excitement would be coming from. The legislature has its hands full when it comes to education-related issues, but the real party seems to be at the Colorado State Board of Education. As faithful readers and education followers know, the Colorado State Board of Education got weird in January by voting (along unexpected lines) to grant districts waivers from the performance-based part of this year’s PARCC exams. Those waivers were slapped down by a recent opinion from Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, but that hasn’t stopped the action at good ol’ SBOE. For starters, the board voted 5-1 (Chairwoman Marcia Neal was absent due to medical issues) to postpone action on the PARCC waiver requests it has received. Judging from comments made during the meeting, this extension is being granted in the hopes that the legislature will “clarify” the issue. According to Chalkbeat, there are currently 20 district waiver requests pending. PARCC’s Performance-Based Assessment is due to be administered next month, which means the extension causes some […]

As you may know, last night was the SOTU. I spent more time than one might expect attempting to convert that into a funny, education-related acronym, but had little success. For the record, I blame my failure on my age and innocent youth. Regardless, no joke for you today. But hey, maybe I don’t need to be cracking jokes. After all, the president’s State of the Union address is pretty important. It hints at future battles, helps set the tone for the year, and provides a little more detail on potential policies in the pipeline.  Most importantly, it outlines the president’s priorities. Maybe that’s why I found it so noticeable that K-12 education—and particularly the massive ESEA reauthorization fight brewing in D.C.—received little more than a rhetorical nod. Oh, and in case you missed the address, the video is below. If you aren’t interested in the full hour-long speech, Education Week put together a decent synopsis that you may find helpful.

A month ago, I put on my policy explorer cap and attended a Colorado State Board of Education meeting. At that meeting, a panel of CDE employees presented a whole bunch of information on testing in Colorado. More specifically, they went into some depth on the various aspects of local control as they relate to PARCC testing in the state. At the time, the panel was waiting for a response from the mothership (also known as the U.S. Department of Education) on a few of their stickier questions. Well, that response has finally been beamed back. Notably, the sci-fi analogy doesn’t seem so farfetched when one looks at DOE’s response document—it actually feels like reading a document written in an alien language. Fortunately, Chalkbeat has provided a helpful summary for those who, like me, find legalese to be far more terrifying than extraterrestrials. After deciphering DOE’s hieroglyphics, the document has some disappointing—albeit unsurprising—answers to the panel’s questions. In brief, Colorado doesn’t have much wiggle room when it comes to testing this year.

Today’s Rocky Mountain News explains Colorado education leaders’ attempt to put greater emphasis on the arts in the state’s new standards and assessments: [Commissioner of Education Dwight] Jones and [Lieutenant Governor Barbara] O’Brien addressed a news conference called to highlight a report showing that many Colorado students are not exposed to the arts, which include music, theater and dance, as well as the visual arts. The report, prepared for the Colorado Department of Education and the Colorado Council on the Arts, shows that art is offered at 93 percent of elementary schools, 86 percent of middle schools and 83 percent of high schools. But 29,000 students attend schools that do not offer art, the study found. Statewide, 53 percent of high school students don’t take art, which is not mandatory even at schools where it is offered. The study found that 75 percent of principals say the arts are being squeezed by the need to focus on reading, writing and math. One of the findings of the new report says that arts education “associates with higher scores” on CSAP tests. But as my smart friends at the Education Policy Center point out, the fact that the two items are associated […]