From the state’s second-largest school district to rural schools on the Eastern Plains, from Colorado Springs to a high-poverty Denver suburb, anxiety is growing over Colorado’s participation in a multistate effort to test students on a common set of academic standards.
Building for months, the politically charged debate over the new assessments is part of broader discussion that interests from across the spectrum agree is important: Are we testing children too much? And which tests are the right ones?
Colorado’s road to more rigorous academic standards stretches back about seven years. But the scheduled arrival this spring of new online tests aligned with Common Core — national math and language arts standards adopted by roughly 40 states, including Colorado — has brought concerns to the fore.
The dividing lines are many. The standards are too high or too low. The costs of taking part in the tests or sitting them out are too great. Local control over curriculum is being compromised or respected. The standards inspire critical thinking or are hopelessly muddled.
Jill Hawley, an associate commissioner with the Colorado Department of Education, said the brighter spotlight demonstrates change is difficult and the conversation is important.
“The reality is, like everything in life, until you hit up against when you feel someone is going to see if you are going to do the work or not, you pay more attention to it,” Hawley said. “As it gets closer to the assessments, the sense of concern rises.”
To that end, a team of department officials traveled to Lamar in southeastern Colorado this month to meet with district superintendents, teachers and citizens to respond to questions.
Hawley said the trip reinforced the need to support teachers. The department plans to put together summaries on the changes teachers can share during conferences with parents, she said.
Colorado adopted Common Core for math and language arts in 2010 as part of an integration with revised state standards in other areas.
The idea behind Common Core and the aligned tests is to set rigorous, consistent standards for all students and then compare how students are doing across states, something not previously possible.
Colorado joined a consortium of states called the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC.
Noticeable backlash to Common Core began surfacing in Colorado earlier this year, when legislation was proposed to delay PARCC testing and revisit the whole idea.
That effort fizzled and morphed into a bill creating a 15-member task force on standards and assessments that has met twice so far and is to issue a final report to the legislature by January.
By one recent gauge, the public wants change. The state Department of Education this month released a study that found educators, administrators and parents want fewer, shorter tests.
Some states are pushing back — and suffering consequences. On Thursday, the Obama administration stripped Oklahoma of authority to decide how to spend $29 million in education funding because the state abandoned Common Core.
Also last week, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal filed a federal lawsuit claiming the U.S. Department of Education coerced states into adopting Common Core with the promise of grant money.
Sonja Semion, executive director of Stand for Children Colorado, a backer of the standards and assessments, notes the state is in the midst of monumental changes in education, from higher academic standards to teacher evaluations being linked to test performance to the new assessments. So some angst is understandable, she said.
The previous state assessments — the Transitional Colorado Assessment Program, or TCAP — were not aligned with the new standards, and the state is not adding tests but replacing one, Semion said.
“Let’s not throw up our hands now before the changes have had a chance to make a difference for students,” she said.
Yet some school districts want out — or, at least, to slow down.
The board of Mapleton Public Schools in Adams County approved resolutions urging state policymakers to withdraw from PARCC, reduce state assessments to the federal minimum, and allow parents and students to opt out of state tests without negative consequences for local districts.
Those resolutions were submitted for consideration at the fall meeting of the Colorado Association of School Boards in September. Mapleton Superintendent Charlotte Ciancio said the district is concerned about focusing only on standards that will be tested and requiring students who aren’t technologically savvy to take tests on computers.
In Colorado Springs School District 11, Superintendent Nicholas Gledich floated the idea of requesting a three-year waiver from state assessments but pulled back after learning state statute forbids it.
The district believes testing is foundational to measuring learning but wants to use results to help individual students — “to focus on the whole child and not worry so much about what the state is going to do or not do,” said interim spokeswoman Mary Crimmins.
For the first time, District 11 this year gave schools the choice of opting out of its Measures of Academic Performance tests, given up to three times a year. To the district’s surprise, no one took up the offer.
“When you empower people like that and they make that decision, there is more buy-in,” said Crimmins, a retired principal. “Instead of ‘Yes, we’ve got to do it,’ it’s ‘I am going to use this now to see where my kids are starting.’ “
In Jefferson County Public Schools, the second-largest district in the state, the board last week took up a resolution decrying federal and state intrusion into education.
The resolution submitted by board member Julie Williams supported any legislation to delay the PARCC tests and reassess their worth.
Resolutions working off the same template were considered or passed last spring by a few Eastern Plains districts. Williams said she does not know who wrote the template.
“A lot of people are calling this Obama-core for our children,” she said. “It’s unfunded, it’s a massive intrusion of testing, pitting teacher against teacher, putting pressure on students, taking away their instruction and putting (teachers’) paychecks on the line.”
The board voted 3-2 to table the resolution after chairman Ken Witt proposed a study session to examine testing issues in more depth.
Under Colorado law, the state is empowered to set academic standards, but curriculum is a local decision.
The standards grew not out of a federal agency but, rather, governors and a group of state school officers. Still, the U.S. Education Department made adopting Common Core an incentive for states competing in its Race to the Top grant sweepstakes.
“There is really not an overreach now,” said Tony Lewis, executive director of the Donnell-Kay Foundation and a member of the state’s standards and assessments task force. “People are sick of the testing and pushing back any way they can.”
Chris Watney, president and CEO of the Colorado Children’s Campaign, a supporter of the standards and tests, said proponents need to do a better job of getting information out.
“As I learned more about the standards and the aligned tests, I really see it as the opposite of anxiety-producing,” she said. “I think it’s really designed to give us peace of mind, knowing our students know what they need to know and where they might need support.”
Longtime math teacher Cassie Harrelson, who coaches teachers in math in Aurora Public Schools, is conflicted about the new assessments. And she contributed to them.
Harrelson reviewed elements of the PARCC test, getting input from teachers. She said she believes the assessments are strong but worries about too many tests, including those that districts give to gauge how prepared their students are for state tests.
“I want to be optimistic but also realistic,” she said. “People do things with good intentions. But when it comes down to what it looks like on a daily basis, I am not sure it’s the very best for kids.”
Eric Gorski: 303-954-1971, egorski@denverpost.com or twitter.com/egorski
