Schools

Sponsors of legislation to scale back the number of tests Colorado students take this spring hope this approach represents a middle ground that satisfies the desire to take stock of how COVID disruptions affected student learning while still giving school districts some relief from logistical challenges. 

Colorado has an estimated 120,000 K-12 school staff and child care workers, and as of Sunday, 93,175 of them have received their first shot. Eligible workers include not just classroom teachers, but bus drivers, food service workers, classroom aides, and others.

Some say collecting data from the CMAS test is particularly critical after a year of tears, disengagement and online learning

The work of SROs was questioned by members of city council in February in the wake of fears officers may be targeting minority students for tickets and arrests. Both Denver Public Schools and the Boulder Valley School District have opted to remove SROs from their campuses over complaints that minority students were unfairly singled out by in-school police.

Don Haddad, superintendent of the St. Vrain Valley School District, said the current system creates bad incentives. A district with more lenient graduation requirements might come out ahead of one that requires rigorous coursework and invests in modern career and technical education.

The school board last week unanimously approved new names for the Career Development Center, Olde Columbine High School and St. Vrain Online Global Academy. The board also approved branding for the campus housing the programs as the Global Acceleration Campus to support promoting the programs, said Area Assistant Superintendent Dina Perfetti-Deany.

School boards, superintendents, and teachers unions have called for the tests to be canceled this year. They say administering the tests represents major logistical challenges, including calling back computers that students are using for remote learning, and would take away from instructional time without providing valid data.

Colorado funds its schools on a per-pupil basis, and lawmakers could have held back millions promised to schools after the October student tally recorded nearly 30,000 fewer students this year, a 3% decline.  Instead, Colorado lawmakers said they would maintain school funding in recognition that schools have incurred additional costs to educate students in a pandemic.

The lab visited Longmont Estates Elementary this morning and will head to Timberline PK-8 from 1 to 3 p.m. today. The stops are just two of those planned over the next three months at all of the district’s elementary schools.

This year there’s a good chance a big chunk of students will opt out of the exams, among other potential changes. Experts say that means the tests likely won’t be able to offer the kind of complete or comparable data policymakers rely on in a typical year.