ADVOCACY 2022

Legislative Scorecard 2022

(Click here to go straight to the scorecard.)

A4PEP has as its core the belief that our society depends on a well-educated population, which is achieved by putting students’ and teachers’ needs first. A4PEP was created in response to what students, parents, and educators felt were the adverse effects of failed “education reform” policies overly based on corporate interests.

A4PEP’s assessment of the 2022 session of the State Legislature is that it made fairly good progress on improving public education policies.

Click here for the bills A4PEP considered for its analysis of the 2022 Legislature in each priority category, with a description of them and an explanation of A4PEP’s opinion on its impact on public education policy.

These were A4PEP’s legislative priorities for 2022:

Rethinking accountability, assessment, and teacher evaluation
Adequate and equitable funding
Equal access and desegregation
Quality neighborhood schools

A4PEP’s key principles which form the basis for all of its advocacy are as follows:

A stable, fair, and accessible public education

Sustainable public schools.
Integrated and inclusive neighborhood schools.
Culturally relevant, engaging, and comprehensive curricula.
Community-wide, targeted interventions for each child.
Transformative parent, family, and community engagement.

The opportunity to have skilled, passionate, caring educators

Professionally licensed educators.
Educators with high expectations for every student.
Educators with cultural competence and deep knowledge of content, pedagogy, and child development.
Educators who are effectively prepared, mentored, supported, and retained.

An education system that is responsible to all students

Accountability and transparency.
Public taxpayer dollars used only for public schools.
Community-driven, democratically elected school boards.
Multiple measures to gauge student, school, and district progress.

Concerns about Adams 14's Turnaround status

In April of 2022, A4PEP wrote a letter to the Colorado State Board of Education expressing its strong objection to the recommendations of the State Review Panel to deal with Adams 14’s Turnaround status by closing Adams City High School (ACHS) and/or reorganizing the district (by consolidating it with one or more other districts). A letter to the editor of The Denver Post was sent expressing the same objection.

A4PEP opposed HB22-1395 - (bill died "on the calendar")

A4PEP opposed HB 1395, Transportation Innovation Grant Program. While acknowledging the urgency of addressing the shortage of transportation to public schools, especially for under-resourced communities that have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, A4PEP did not believe that HB 1395 was the right solution. This grant program would have done nothing to address the public health issues related to COVID or to provide mitigations for it. We know people who have begun jobs as school bus drivers but quit after a short time because they just don’t think they are paid enough to deal with children’s behavior and sometimes simultaneously difficult weather conditions. The solution to this is not a grant program; it’s better funding for the categorical portion of school finance, which always gets short shrift because special education is so poorly funded.

A4PEP supported SB22-044 - (bill defeated in Senate Education Committee)

A4PEP strongly supported SB 44, Use of Student Growth in Educator Evaluations. The bill would have changed the educator evaluation law by removing the requirement that 50% of teacher evaluations be based on student growth measures, but allow test scores to be used collectively at the grade or school levels. A4PEP has strongly advocated that the use of standardized test scores to determine teachers' effectiveness is inappropriate.

Undue Influence of DFER

Also in April of 2022, A4PEP wrote a letter to the Democrats in the State Legislature expressing great concern about the influence of DFER (Democrats for Education Reform) on Democratic legislators.