What was perhaps the most important education bill on Thursday’s legislative agenda was passed rather quietly as the Senate Education Committee worked into the early evening.

After discussing and then approving several amendments, the committee voted 7-0 to approve Senate Bill 09-163, a bill that cosponsor Sen. Keith King, R-Colorado Springs, called “a phenomenal shift.”

The 104-page Education Accountability Act of 2009, proposes substantial changes in the ways that student, school and district performance are reported, in how underperforming schools are improved and what parents and the public are told about school performance.

Only four witnesses testified on the bill, and much of the committee session was spent with members, Department of Education staff, a legislative bill drafter and a lobbyist fine-tuning amendments.

Most of that discussion involved the exact role of school accountability committees and administrators in preparing various kinds of school improvement plans.

The bill now moves to the Senate Appropriations Committee, although it actually would save money for the state.

If the bill becomes law, the familiar School Accountability Reports, which rate schools’ academic performance as “excellent,” “high,” “average” or “low,” would be replaced by a new online information portal nicknamed “EDGE” (for Education Data and Growth Exchange Portal). That site would contain information about the state as a whole, districts and individual schools, including CSAP scores, student growth year to year and other academic information.

It would be up to the State Board of Education to decide if some of non-academic information now included on the SARs, such as school safety data and special programs, would continue to be reported.

The new law would required parents be periodically notified of the availability of information on EDGE, and they would receive printed school reports on request.

(But, even if the bill passes, the usual summer release of CSAP scores and the late-autumn release of federal Adequate Yearly Progress reports would likely happen as usual this year. If the bill passes, federal approval would be required to use the new system for reporting AYP.)

Those low-to-excellent ratings would be replaced by a six-step rating scheme that would align the public reporting system with the Department of Education process for accrediting school districts. The six levels are:

• Accredited with distinction
• Accredited
• Accredited with improvement plan
• Accredited with priority improvement plan
• Accredited with turnaround plan
• Unaccredited
  

Districts would be evaluated and accredited based on the academic growth of their students year to year, achievement levels on statewide tests, the progress made in closing achievement gaps and on the postsecondary and workforce readiness of their high school students. The bill would eliminate the current “CSAP penalty,” under which students who miss tests negatively affect a school’s rating, and the complicating weighting system used in the School Accountability Reports.

Growth would the key element in the new system. Last year CDE unveiled the Colorado Growth Model, a system that enables year-to-year tracking of individual student CSAP scores and can be used to predict what rate of growth is needed for a student to progress through the four levels of CSAP performance – Unsatisfactory, Partially Proficient, Proficient and Advanced.
 
The bill calls for CDE to measure the percentage of students in each school and district that are on track to catch up to proficient levels, stay there or move up to advanced. Students would be expected to move to proficient within three years, or by 10th grade.

Reaching the desired levels of student growth will be a challenge for Colorado. Department statistics show that of students who aren’t currently proficient, only 30 percent are making enough progress to catch up in reading, only 26 percent in writing and only 13 percent in math.

For now, the familiar CSAP tests would remain the basis for determining student growth and achievement levels. Achievement gaps would be calculated using CSAP scores plus graduation rates and ACT test scores. Postsecondary and workforce readiness would be calculated based on graduation rates and ACT scores.

The major education reform law of 2008, the Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids, requires adopting a description of postsecondary and workforce readiness by this Dec. 15, and adoption of a readiness tests by Dec. 15, 2010. That’s also the deadline for the State Board of Education to adopt statewide tests that are expected to replace the CSAPs.

The state board would be given power to set annual achievement goals for grades three through 12 and to take action when districts don’t improve for five consecutive years. Districts would have to have performance plans, improvement plans, priority improvement plans or turnaround plans, based on their accreditation levels. A new state review panel would be created to advise the SBE on the adequacy of district plans and on any school restructuring.

The board could reorganize or close schools in districts that drop into the unaccredited status. (The law would apply to all school districts, including charters, and to charters supervised by the state Charter School Institute.)

The bill would require the Department of Education to assist districts in improvement efforts.

SB 09-163 also would update the system of accountability committees at the district and school levels. The panels would advise school boards and principals on improvement plans and related issues.

The bill has an influential and bipartisan set of sponsors, Evie Hudak, D-Westminster, and Keith King, R-Colorado Springs, in the Senate and Karen Middleton, D-Aurora, and Tom Massey, R-Poncha Springs, in the House. Hudak and Middleton are both former SBE members, King has wide education experience and is a former House majority leader, and Massey is the ranking Republican on the House Education Committee.

There was some joking among Senate Ed members about the odd King-Hudak pairing. “This is worth the price of admission” to watch them work together,” joked Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver.

Sen. Rollie Heath, D-Boulder, called the bill “just a huge step forward.”

(Use the Education Bill Tracker for links to bill texts. Right-click on the bill number to open in a new window; close that window to return to the Tracker.)