HB25-1278, Education Accountability System

Advocates for Public Education Policy (A4PEP) has many concerns about HB25-1278, and we opposed this bill in its introduced form. We realize the intent of the bill is to implement the recommendations of the task force created by HB23-1241. The overriding problem is that while the task force was created to study academic opportunities, inequities, and promising practices for educational accountability, the task force's report to the Legislature revealed that its primary focus was mainly on refining and expanding test-based data.  Thus, HB25-1278 fails to propose new ideas and strategies that would make fundamental improvements to the state accountability system, which was the plea and the expectation from school superintendents and school board members across the state two years ago.

 

Furthermore, whereas the federal law Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) granted states the opportunity to redesign their own comprehensive accountability system that is not based primarily on standardized tests, the task force did not utilize the flexibility granted by the federal government and ignored the extensive research showing that test-based accountability has not closed achievement gaps. 

 

HB25-1278 fails to address the core inequities in the current system which were highlighted by multiple school leaders across the state. There are no major changes to the accountability system that meet the needs of at-risk students.  Research proves that the demographic factors of race, poverty, linguistic differences, and disabilities are directly related to challenges in learning that affect many students’ ability to perform well on standardized tests.  However, this bill implies that the causes of low academic performance are poor teacher training, parental opting out, the length of time students spend taking tests in one sitting, and districts’ lack of access to knowledge about effective education management partners.  The bill doesn’t address the documented evidence regarding the discriminatory nature of standardized tests, other than proposing to give them in multiple languages. It offers access to grants only for the lowest-performing schools and districts, ignoring the fact that nearly every school district has achievement gaps.

 

We find the bill’s focus on punishing schools and districts with low participation rates to be a rebuke to parents who make what they believe to be the best decisions for their children.  Parents don’t opt their kids out of tests because they lack information about the “importance of state assessments” – they do so for many reasons, because they know the importance of their children’s emotional well-being. Over 80% of parents surveyed in 2023 do not believe standardized tests are an accurate measure of their child’s learning.  The bill does nothing to promote authentic learning.  It perpetuates the stigmatization of students, schools, and communities that causes segregation, as well as the blaming of teachers that causes so many to leave the profession.  The provision requiring districts to communicate with organizations that “advocate for state assessment opt-outs” creates a chilling effect, deterring organizations’ First Amendment rights to free speech.

 

Finally, the bill tasks the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) with many new responsibilities, driving an initial fiscal note of $ 5,750,648 for 8.6 FTE for FY 25/26.  With the state currently having a substantial budget shortfall, it is both unrealistic and short-sighted to approve spending which will do nothing to improve the learning conditions for Colorado students.

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SR25-009, School Choice

(the bill was defeated in the Senate State Affairs Committee)

A4PEP opposed this resolution because we do not believe it is necessary, when school choice has been law in Colorado for 30 years.   Open enrollment allows families to enroll their children in any public school in the state, regardless of their assigned district.   Parents may already choose homeschooling, online learning, traditional public schools, magnet schools, or charter schools.

 

Furthermore, A4PEP disagrees with the generalizations and false assumptions in this resolution: 

• That competition drives excellence, when in fact, competition creates a market-based system that promotes marketing for students and encourages the use of outside money being spent to promote one school over another. 

• That the COVID-19 pandemic led “countless families to seek alternative education options” when in fact, 85% of students still attend district-run schools, not a substantial change from before the pandemic.

• That school choice plays a critical role in advancing student achievement, when many studies now indicate minimal to no improvement in student performance.

 

One can hardly say that there have been “record levels of school funding,” when two recent adequacy studies have revealed that Colorado is underfunding its public schools at $3.5 billion - $4.1 billion annually.   The constraints of TABOR primarily limit our ability to properly fund public education and pay our teachers the salaries they deserve, much more so than “administrative overhead and non-instructional costs.”

 

We strongly disagree with “prioritizing funding models that reward success, promote innovation, and deliver resources where they matter most”.  This wording is vague, misleading, and dangerous.  A4PEP strongly believes that public education dollars should not be used to fund private and parochial schools, and yet those schools are listed in this resolution as school choice options. We believe prioritizing adequate funding for ALL public school classrooms is what matters most.

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Lastly, A4PEP believes that this resolution is setting the stage for vouchers by using the language of “school choice” as the hook to influence voters to support Initiative 22 and its subsequent ballot measure.  One can look at the devastating budget issues facing Arizona, Florida, Oklahoma, Ohio, Iowa, and other states which have adopted vouchers to see how devastating that would be for Colorado.