The report takes an overall gloomy view of the situation, concluding, “School districts, states and teacher preparation training programs have yet to establish what knowledge a new teacher should have to enter a classroom with some facility for applying data to improve classroom instruction. In fact, the field has struggled to incorporate data driven decision making into its program sequences.

“Today’s schools demand teachers who can comfortably understand and utilize — both individually and collaboratively — a full range of classroom and standardized data, whether the data relate to their own students or to all the students in their school. Preparing them for anything less is unfair to teacher candidates as well as to the many students they plan to teach.”

The study reviewed 180 undergraduate and graduate programs at 98 institutions in 30 states.

“Our overall conclusion is that while assessment is addressed to some extent in all but five of the 180 programs we examined, only six programs (3 percent) provide preparation that can be deemed adequate: four elementary programs and two secondary programs,” the report said, adding that 13 percent of programs covered assessment with partial adequacy and that 83 percent were inadequate.

Colorado institutions included in the study were Adams State College, Colorado Mesa University, Colorado State University-Pueblo and University of Colorado campuses in Boulder, Colorado Springs and Denver. Results were not broken out by individual programs.

Those six schools served about a quarter of the more than 13,000 education students enrolled at 18 institutions in 2011.

The report rated schools on their training in three areas:

• Assessment literacy – measurement of student performance using assessments. “Only 21 percent of the programs in the sample cover literacy topics adequately, with an additional 21 percent doing so with partial adequacy. More than half of all programs have no, very limited or limited coverage.”
• Analytical skills – analyzing student performance data from assessments. “Less than 1 percent of the programs in the sample cover analytical skills adequately, with an additional 8 percent doing so with partial adequacy. The vast majority of programs (92 percent) have no, very limited or limited coverage.”
• Instructional decision-making – using performance data to plan instruction. “Fewer than 2 percent of programs in the sample cover instructional decision making adequately, with 7 percent doing so with partial adequacy. The vast majority of programs (91 percent) have no, very limited or limited coverage.”

The report drew its conclusions from reviewing the syllabi of education programs to try to determine if courses included instruction about assessments. Some 455 courses were reviewed, an average of 2.5 courses per program, according to the report. The study acknowledged that it may be over-weighted toward public institutions because course information was gathered through public records requests, which public institutions are required to honor but private institutions are not.

The report recommends more federal funding to provide incentives for schools of education, pressure by school districts on preparation programs and inclusion of assessment evaluation skills on state licensing exams.

The NCTQ is a prolific issuer of reports, primarily on teacher preparation, and it’s teamed up with U.S. News & World Report to issue a review of all U.S. teacher prep programs early next year. Its work has come under periodic criticism, particularly for its heavy reliance on syllabi to draw conclusions and for other elements of its research methods.

Last January, the council released its fifth annual State Teacher Policy Yearbook and graded Colorado as average for its teacher policies. The overall “C” in the 2011 report is a jump from the D+ that the state was awarded in 2009. But the state got a D- for “delivering well-prepared teachers.”

The January report lauded Colorado for being one of 12 states where student achievement is the most significant factor in teacher evaluations – or will be when Senate Bill 10-191 is fully implemented. It also cites Colorado as one of only three states to earn an A for exiting ineffective teachers, noting state law prevents districts from basing layoffs on seniority alone and clearly says ineffectiveness in the classroom is grounds for dismissal, also part of 10-191.

A 2011 NCTQ report on student teaching programs gave high marks to the program at Colorado Christian University but called those at the University of Northern Colorado and Western State College “poor,” according to this EdNews’ story. Those were the only Colorado programs reviewed.

Former Colorado Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien chairs the NCTQ board of directors, and Sen. Mike Johnston, D-Denver and author of Colorado’s educator effectiveness law, sits on its advisory board.

The council is funded by such foundations as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Broad Foundation and the Denver-based Daniels Fund. Get more information on the council from SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy.

Disclosure: The Daniels Fund is a funder of Education News Colorado. Read our statement of editorial independence.

Beach Court Elementary students, shown in a photo from the school's website.

In 2009, for example, 76 percent of Beach Court fifth-graders scored proficient on state math tests. Just 29 percent of those same students scored proficient in math the following year when they entered sixth grade in a variety of middle schools.

By contrast, in Denver Public Schools overall, sixth-graders in 2009 scored 1 percentage point higher in math then they did fifth grade the year before – 47 to 46 percent.

In conducting the analysis, I-News studied student test score records obtained from the Colorado Department of Education. DPS has declined to provide any data or other information until after the state wraps up its investigation.

Earlier this week, Education News Colorado reported that Beach Court Principal Frank Roti has been placed on administrative leave while the state investigates testing anomalies at the school. Hallett Fundamental Academy is also being investigated. The I-News analysis of test scores did not find test score drops at Hallett similar to those at Beach Court.

Sources confirmed the district’s analysis of Colorado Student Assessment Program results included an examination of erasure marks on student answer sheets. Results showed the two schools far exceeded district averages in the number of wrong answers erased and replaced with correct responses.

The I-News analysis of Beach Court scores found that:

• Between half and three quarters of fifth-grade students in 2007 through 2009 saw their math scores drop at least one level when they left the school and tested in sixth grade.
• Between a third and almost half of fifth graders dropped a level in reading  over three years of testing  and a level in writing over two years of testing after leaving the school.

As a result, the percentage of fifth-grade students at Beach Court achieving proficiency in math, reading and writing dropped by a half or more between 2009 and 2010 when they were sixth graders in a different school

I-News looked at how fifth graders who took the tests at Beach Court in 2007 through 2009 fared on the CSAP tests the next year when they entered a new school in sixth grade.   The analysis compared how the same students scored – unsatisfactory, partially proficient, proficient or advanced. Between one and three fifth graders each year did not have scores the next year as sixth graders.

The biggest declines took place between 2009 testing at Beach Court and 2010 tests in sixth grade.  Thirty-seven of the 49 fifth graders, or 75 percent, fell at least one level in math.  The biggest drop was from proficient to partially proficient. Twenty of the 21 fifth graders fell below proficiency when they took the math test in sixth grade.  In addition, 13 of the 17 fifth graders who scored advanced on math at Beach Court fell to proficient  or lower after they left the school.

For reading in 2009, 22 of 49 students dropped a level the next year and 25 of 49 dropped a level in writing. As with math,  the biggest declines were from scoring proficient at Beach Court to scoring partially proficient in sixth grade.

The declines bucked the districtwide trends.

For all DPS schools, 46 percent of fifth graders scored proficient or better in 2009 in math, rising to 47 percent when they became sixth graders in 2010.

For all of DPS, the percent scoring proficient or advanced in reading rose from 48 percent in fifth grade in 2009 to 54 percent in sixth grade in 2010. In writing, the scores were the same in fifth grade in 2009 as they were in sixth grade for 2010 – 41 percent proficient or advanced.

Earlier years

About half of the fifth graders who took math tests at Beach Court in 2008 dropped a level the next year. For reading and writing, it was about 30 percent of fifth graders who lost ground the next year.

Just under half of the fifth graders dropped a level after taking reading and math tests in 2007 at Beach Court. A break down on proficiency levels was not available for writing. Only scale scores were used in the data base analyzed by I-News.

I-News also  analyzed scores for Hallet Fundamental School, but the database used by I-News did not include scores to compare the 2010 and 2011 years that are the focus of the investigation. The analysis found that most scores stayed the same or rose between fifth and sixth grades.

Reflections of a former Beach Court teacher

Bernadette Lopez taught third grade at Beach Court from 2005 to 2008, when she left to join the teacher-led Math and Science Leadership Academy. Lopez has since left teaching to enroll in law school.

During her three years at the school, Lopez said CSAP tests were closely monitored. Teachers picked up their boxes of tests in the morning before testing and the boxes were immediately picked up after testing was over.

She also pointed out that no teacher had access to the tests for all of their students. That’s because of testing accommodations allowed under state testing rules. So students who qualified for extra time, for example, or other special circumstances would be under the supervision of a different proctor.

“I never had access to 100 percent of my students’ tests,” she said.

Lopez said she heard about the cheating investigation and “felt really bad for the teachers who have worked so hard … it tarnishes what we did.”

“When I was there, things were on the up and up,” she said. “I never saw anything that would be suspect.”

But she also noted, “I don’t know what happens after someone picks up the boxes” of tests – “you turn in your box … you never see it again.”

“It’s almost too bad the district made such a big deal out of the school – it felt like there was so much pressure to keep scores up,” she said.

Lopez said the second year she taught at Beach Court, 89 percent of her third-graders scored proficient or advanced in reading; the next year, the figure was 100 percent. “I didn’t even think it was possible for all of my students to do so well.”

Still, if someone were trying to cheat, why falsely create 100 percent proficiency, which could create suspicion, she asked.

Lopez and other teachers pointed out that Frank Roti, the Beach Court principal, did not always have the best relationships with teachers.

“If teachers were aware of cheating going on, it probably would have been reported,” she said. On the other hand, if teachers felt nothing would really happen to a principal, they may not have felt it would make a difference.

“You’re going to have different kids every year, your scores are going to fluctuate,” she said. “If there is something to it, the pressure got to somebody.”

Gov. John Hickenlooper was flanked by second graders from Aurora's Kenton Elementary as he signed the Colorado READ Act on May 17, 2012.

“It’s really a great day for young people in Colorado,” said Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia, the administration’s point man on education. “”But we’re not done. We have a long way to go.”

The law, nearly a year in the making, is the most significant piece of education legislation to emerge from the just-completed 2012 regular session. It also has the distinction of being one of the few recent Colorado education reform laws to come with significant funding.

Several speakers at the signing ceremony referred to the long process it took to get to the final product.

“It certainly takes a village to write a bill to help raise a child,” joked Sen. Mike Johnston, D-Denver and a prime sponsor of the bill.

Here are the key features of the READ Act:

• Next school year districts will report to the Department of Education the number of K-3 students with significant reading deficiencies. The State Board of Education the will define what constitutes a significant reading deficiency for the purposes of the law. SBE has until March 31, 2013, to adopt the rules for the new program.

• The law is expected to cover up to 24,000 students. An estimated quarter of Colorado third graders don’t read at grade level.

• Starting in 2013-14 districts will annually assess K-3 students’ reading abilities with CDE-approved tests. The department is required to create a list of approved instructional programs and professional development programs that districts can use.

• Individual READ plans have to be created for students with significant deficiencies. The law also creates a process for parent, teacher and administrator consultation to determine each year if students should advance to the next grade. Parents have the final say for K-2 students. Superintendents (or designated administrators) will review the cases of third graders recommended for advancement and can decide to retain a student. Special services must be provided for third graders who are held back.

• The law contains protections and exemptions for students with disabilities, limited English proficiency or who have already been retained.

• The program will divert interest revenue from the state school lands permanent fund to provide about $16 million in per-pupil funding (about $700 per student) to districts working with students who have significant reading deficiencies. The law also includes some $5 million in funding to be used for CDE administration costs ($1 million) and for professional development grants to districts. So total funding in 2012-13 will be about $21 million.

• Districts receiving the per-pupil funding will be required to use specific interventions, such as enrollment in full-day kindergarten, summer school or tutoring.

• The law abolishes the existing Read-to-Achieve grant program and uses its remaining funding for the new grant program.

Rep. Tom Massey, R-Poncha Springs / File photo

The original concept called for mandatory retention of lagging third graders, but that plan was quickly dropped in the face of widespread opposition.

As passed by the House, HB 12-1238 had a “preference” for retention, contained only $5 million in funding and also would have required services for a second group of students, those with just “reading deficiencies.”

Low funding and some of the bill’s language didn’t sit well with Senate Democratic leaders, and the bill was significantly amended. More funding was added, the bill was refocused on a smaller group of students, some of the more detailed requirements for parent consultation and notification were streamlined and retention language was softened.

Democratic Sens. Rollie Heath of Boulder and Bob Bacon of Fort Collins were key figures in crafting the Senate compromise, in consultation with Massey.

Several speakers at the ceremony highlighted Heath’s role in the bill. Garcia said Heath “reall helped keep us on track … and come up with a bill we all could fully support.”

The Senate sponsors were Johnston and Sen. Nancy Spence, R-Centennial. Hickenlooper advisors also were heavily involved with the READ Act from the beginning.

Rep. Judy Solano, D-Brighton

The READ Act is the swansong for some lawmakers who have been key players on education legislation for years. Massey, Bacon, Spence and Solano all are leaving the Capitol because of term limits.

The board heard more than three hours worth of speakers during an afternoon public comment session, and most of them were there to talk about possible plans to open a West Denver Prep High School somewhere in northwest Denver. Several of the options the district is considering involve co-locating the proposed new charter high school on the North High School campus. West Denver Prep Highlands Middle School already shares campus space with North, albeit in a detached building.

North supporters expressed concern that putting a separate charter school within their building would limit North’s potential for future growth, and said they are loath to do anything that might derail recent, modest  academic improvements at the school. They brought with them a petition signed by 600 people requesting the board not co-locate West Denver Prep High School at North.

Jenny Davies-Schley spoke of her desire to send her child to a traditional comprehensive public high school with a broad array of sports, academic and cultural activities. She said she fears that if North must share its facilities with a charter school, students living in the neighborhood who want to attend North may one day find there’s no room for them.

She also said she fears putting two schools in the same building would harm the North’s culture.

“What I heard loud and clear at the community meeting is there are a lot of West Denver Prep families committed to their school,” she said. “But I also heard they hold North in very low regard. That’s a problem. Putting a culture together in schools where there is no respect, we’ll have problems. We’ll have to revisit that next year and the year after.”

Supporters of West Denver Prep, on the other hand, brought with them 328 letters of intent from parents who say they would send their children to the charter high school if it were located in the neighborhood.

“Since it opened, hundreds and hundreds of students who go there have discovered they are academically capable,” said Marie Sierra, parent of a West Denver Prep middle school student. “I want an opportunity for my son to continue his education in his neighborhood.”

“They don’t need to get on buses and drive long distances,” said Joshua Smith, principal at West Denver Prep’s Harvey Park campus. Smith rejected options that would place the charter school at Remington or Del Pueblo, recently closed school buildings that are empty but are farther away from the northwest Denver neighborhoods where most WDP students live. “Placing the high school at Remington or Del Pueblo would be unjust.”

Original story starts here: West Denver Prep’s request to open a high school in Northwest Denver drew hundreds of neighborhood residents to a community meeting Wednesday night, packing the auditorium at Smedley Elementary to overflowing.

Northwest Denver residents jammed into the former Smedley Elementary auditorium Wednesday to hear and debate possible options for opening a West Denver Prep High School in the neighborhood.

On one side of the room were fans of the charter school, which currently has four middle school campuses, including two in Northwest Denver, all of which consistently rank among the most distinguished academically in the DPS system. They want to see that sort of option available to high school students as well.

On the other side were fans of North High School, the community’s beleaguered public high school that has endured years of failed reform efforts, but that supporters believe may at last be on the road to redemption. They want to see North’s new principal, the highly-regarded Nicole Veltze, given the time and resources needed to turn the school around the way they say she did Skinner Middle School.

Many said they fear charter schools – particularly those sharing a campus with a non-charter – absorb space and resources that the non-charters need to thrive.

And at the front of the room: DPS officials trying to manage a roomful of parents, students, staff and community members whose emotions were running high, and see to it that all felt that their concerns were being heard, and that all understood the options confronting the school board as it weighs the pros and cons of where to put a new school.

Some of the options involve putting West Denver Prep High School onto the same campus as North.

Lack of trust an obstacle

It was apparent that those three groups – Denver West Prep supporters, North High School supporters, and DPS officials – were unsure about one another’s motives.

“I hope we can have some trust as we go through the agenda,” Yana Smith, director of regional community engagement for DPS, told the packed house at the start of the meeting. “You can push back respectfully. That’s welcomed. It’s not our intention to stand here and talk AT you for the next two hours.” No yelling, no name-calling, respectful listening – those were the evening’s ground rules.

Some parents explained why they sent their children to West Denver Prep and would never send them to North. Others explained why they sent their children to North and why they felt every parent ought to consider doing so. North alumni extolled the education they got. Current North students extolled the education they are getting. Most agreed they hoped this dispute wouldn’t turn neighbor against neighbor, but feared it might.

Two-and-a-half hours later, after facilitators had roamed the room with microphones allowing many – but not all – of those who wanted the speak the chance to do so, Smith drew the meeting to a close. “I can’t say it didn’t go the way I had hoped,” she said. “Anytime there’s such a division between perspectives, emotions, options, priorities, having purposeful dialogue is challenging.”

School board to weigh options over the next month

Those who are interested will get another bite at the apple today when the Denver school board hosts a public comment session, starting at 3:30, as part of its regularly scheduled meeting. And another community meeting is planned for May 30 at Smedley.

On June 4, the school board will hear presentations from all those applying to open new schools in the fall of 2013– West Denver Prep is one of five new schools seeking to open in or near northwest Denver – and on June 7, district staff will present its recommendations to the board. There will be time for more public comment on June 14 and possibly on June 18. The board will vote on the applications on June 21.

Here’s the background, and the facts the school board will consider when deciding what to do.

Pros and cons to every scenario

Over the next four to five years, the district expects to see about 400 to 500 more students enrolling in North and its feeder schools. The existing elementary schools in the area are full. But there’s some space available at the middle and high school level.

Another consideration is the number of students who live in the area, but choose to go to school elsewhere. School officials calls this the “capture rate,” and North’s is quite low. There are 1,366 high-school-age students living in the North boundary area who attend school somewhere in DPS, but only 824 of them attend North or one of the small alternative high schools nearby.

That means that roughly 500 high school students who could be attending North have chosen to attend another DPS school, and officials estimate an additional 400-500 high school age students live in the area but don’t attend any DPS school. That’s a total of 900 to 1,000 students who live within North’s boundaries, but who choose not to enroll there.

Antonio Esquibel, executive director of West Denver Schools, reassures participants at a community meeting that DPS fully supports North High School and principal Nicole Veltze.

Enter West Denver Prep SMART High School, which projects it would eventually enroll 500 students. Another proposal, for Four Winds Indigenous, an expeditionary learning school with an indigenous-based curriculum, projects it could serve 200 high school students in the northwest area.

DPS officials estimate that the North campus – including the 1913-era building that West Denver Prep Highlands Middle School currently occupies – could accommodate a maximum of 2,070 students. North’s projected enrollment for fall is 1,254, and WDP’s Highland campus middle school projected enrollment is 314. That leaves space for 816 more students.

Thus, one proposal before the school board is to co-locate North, WDP Highlands Middle School and WDP high school all on the North campus. That’s an attractive option financially because it wouldn’t require much in the way of new construction, North’s central location is highly desirable, and the campus is already well-equipped to meet the needs of high school students. On the downside, that doesn’t leave much room for North to grow. The school presently has 940 students. Under this proposal, it would be able to accommodate up to 1,110, but more than that would be tight.

West Denver Prep middle school might relocate

Option 2 involves moving WDP middle school to Remington, an elementary school at 4735 Pecos that was closed in 2008, and letting WDP high school take over the 1913 building at North, plus just three or four classrooms in the main building, and having the two high schools share the gyms, cafeteria and library. That option provides space for North to grow, but it’s more expensive, and Remington is so far away from other schools that students would most likely have to be bused there.

Option 3 involves putting the WDP high school at Remington. That has the advantage of giving the high school its own independent facility, and the Remington building is in good condition. But Remington was built to serve as an elementary school, so remodeling it to serve high school students would be costly.

Option 4 would bring Smedley, which closed as an elementary school several years ago, back into play. Smedley, 4250 Shoshone St., which has a capacity for 447 students, could house WDP high school, or it could house WDP middle school. Either option would be  costly, however. Among several limiting factors: The school doesn’t have the space to create the parking required for a high school and  it has no playing fields.

Or WDP high school or WDP middle school could open at Del Pueblo, another school that closed in recent years. But Del Pueblo’s location – at 7th Avenue and Galapago Street – puts it out of northwest Denver, and with a capacity of just 311 students, additional construction would be required.

Also on the table is a proposal to move either the WDP high school or middle school into Skinner Middle School. Skinner has been held up by some advocates as a model of a neighborhood school turnaround. Data from the Colorado Department of Education show that in 2011, an average of 42 percent of Skinner’s students were proficient or advanced in reading, writing and math CSAP tests. That’s up from 32 percent in 2008. And the school’s median growth percentile 58.7 percent in 2011, up from 54.3 in 2008.

Skinner is a large building, and it would be especially well-suited for the middle school students, but adding a second middle school on the campus could constrain Skinner’s ability to grow.

So none of the options are without drawbacks. And community members on Wednesday had some suggestions of their own. Among them: Converting the now-empty St. Anthony’s Hospital into a high school. Or making whatever arrangements are selected only temporary, and building a new school. Or aligning North’s curriculum more closely with West Denver Prep’s, so the two schools could, in effect, become one.

Residents plead for more time

Or doing nothing, at least not yet. “We have the right to ask for more time,” one parent said. “June 21 is not time enough for anyone to present an answer that will succeed. And we’ll have to revisit this again and again if we don’t take the time now to make this work.”

Already, a new neighborhood organization calling itself Choose North Now has formed to lobby against any proposal to co-locate an additional school at North.

“For too long the district has subjected North to almost-yearly reforms, leaving the curriculum and staff in disarray,” said David Diaz, a former North teacher and coach, and neighborhood parent. “Now that proven leader Nicole Veltze is in place as principal, we need to give her the space and empowerment to build the high-quality school that our diverse neighborhood deserves.”

Choose North Now has launched a petition drive to encourage the school board not to mess with what supporters hope will be strong growth for the venerable high school.

“We could be aligning the curriculum at North and West Denver Prep. We could do that, and it’s free. And we could have the school we all want, and it’s North,” said Mike Kiley, a parent of two school-aged children and a leader of the group.

West High School teacher Nick Childers talks to LEAP peer observer Marianne Kenney.

On this spring day, however, there is an unexpected – or at least partially unexpected – guest. Marianne Kenney is one of Denver Public Schools’ 45 paid “peer observers.” She’s a former Cherry Creek teacher and passionate school reformer. She also helped write the state’s content standards in social studies as Colorado’s former social studies specialist.

It’s her job to unobtrusively watch DPS teachers in action and grade them against a grid of expectations. She is in charge of observing 70 secondary and 25 upper elementary educators. Today, the subject of her scrutiny is Mr. Childers, U.S. history teacher and Teach for America alumnus.

Kenney sits at a desk in a rear corner of the room, and flips open her laptop. Childers begins the lesson.

Welcome to the fish bowl that is teacher effectiveness in Colorado. Right now, one of the biggest fish in the bowl is Denver Public Schools.

DPS stands apart from other Colorado districts for its combination of size and magnitude of challenges. Seventy-three percent of its 80,000 students qualify for free- and reduced-priced lunch based on family income.  It also stands out because of the work and money it is pumping into LEAP, Leading Effective Academic Practice, the district’s pilot teacher evaluation program, which focuses as much – if not more – on professional development as it does on rating teachers. Other Colorado districts testing out new teacher evaluation models are Jeffco, Eagle, Harrison, Brighton, and Douglas County.

All Colorado districts will be required to implement some form of “educator effectiveness” measures after the passage of Senate Bill 10-191 two years ago. With the help of a three-year, $10 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, DPS got a jump start and created its own system.

“What sets us apart is how thoughtful we’ve been,” said Tracy Dorland, deputy chief academic officer for teaching and learning in DPS. “It’s not just a system of evaluation. It’s a system that respects the teaching profession.”

DPS test-drives teacher effectiveness  

Key to SB 10-191 are comprehensive teacher evaluations to  “provide a basis for making decisions in the areas of hiring, compensation, promotion, assignment, professional development, earning and retaining non-probationary status, dismissal, and nonrenewal of contract.” Most teachers now work under collective bargaining rules that place a greater emphasis on years in the classroom than results. Under SB 10-191, at least half a teacher’s evaluation beginning in 2014-2015 will be based on his or her students’ academic growth as evidenced by test scores and other, yet-to-be-determined academic measures.

Nick Childers talking to students about the causes of World War II.

With LEAP, DPS is also experimenting with peer observations, principal observations and student feedback. In addition, the district is piloting meetings between teachers and school leaders to discuss a teacher’s “professionalism” –  the things a teacher does that don’t always get captured during a classroom visit, such as relationships with colleagues and parents. Built into LEAP is support for teacher improvement: Books to read, videos to watch, online or in-person classes to take – all available to the teacher via Schoolnet.

“There is not a teacher out there in any classroom who doesn’t want to be the best they can be,” said former LEAP spokeswoman Amy Skinner, who is now working for the Colorado Department of Education as Race to the Top communications director. “It’s the hardest job in the world. You’re not doing it if you don’t want to get results for kids. (LEAP) is about giving them more of that support they’ve never had.”

LEAP began with a 16-school pilot in spring 2011, then expanded to 127 district schools this year — 94 percent of all district schools — resulting in 3,800 teachers going through the process.

A centerpiece of LEAP was the hiring of 45 peer observers – trained and experienced educators who have the knowledge and expertise in the same subject area as the teacher they’re evaluating. The $3.8 million price tag of the peer observers  comes out of the DPS general fund. The average peer observer salary is nearly $64,000.

Under the old teacher evaluation system, teachers were rated “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory.” More nuanced  information was provided to teachers, but most ranked “satisfactory” nonetheless. Statistically speaking, the ratings didn’t add up. In 2007-08, DPS principals and assistant principals gave unsatisfactory ratings to 33 out of 2,185 teachers evaluated – or 1.5 percent. And that was actually one of the highest percentages of unsatisfactory ratings in any metro district, according to a report in Education News Colorado.

It remains to be seen whether a similar pattern will emerge with LEAP, which uses numerical ratings against four major areas: Positive classroom culture and climate; effective classroom management; masterful content delivery; and high-impact instructional moves, such as checking for understanding of content and language objectives or differentiating lessons based on ability.

A score of 1 or 2 means the teacher is not meeting expectations; a 3 or 4 means a teacher is approaching expectations; a 5 or 6 signals an effective teacher; and 7 is distinguished.

During the first of three evaluation windows this year, teachers were given numeric scores. In the second window, they weren’t. In the third, numeric scores were used again but the framework had changed. As a result, DPS officials declined to release any of the ratings at this time.

“Until we are able to show more data points, it is unfair to share the observation data,” said Skinner.

In the past, teachers also complained about inconsistency in how principals evaluated them. At one school, a principal might have said a teacher was “top-notch.” But at another school, a different principal gave the same teacher negative reviews. Politics could also become a factor. And observations by principals were not consistent and only happened once every three years.

“It was more about a relationship with an adult as opposed what you did with the kids,” said Pam Shamburg, a Denver Classroom Teachers Association (DCTA) representative on LEAP.

A look at peer observation

At first, many DPS teachers weren’t happy about unannounced visits to their classrooms by peer observers.  But LEAP

LEAP peer observer Marianne Kenney takes notes during her visit to teacher Nick Childers' U.S. History class.

staffers say teachers are warming up to the idea now that they’re getting used to the observers. Of the teachers who participated in LEAP observations in spring 2011, 81 percent reported they would be able to improve their practice based on feedback, and 74 percent said they would speak positively about the observation and feedback experience to colleagues.

This year, trained peer observers visited teachers at least twice, evaluating them against the original 21-indicator rubric and later  against a condensed, 12-point rubric. (Check out the revised rubric.)

Candis Hitchcock, 57, a veteran special education teacher at South High School, said she likes the idea of peer observations – even though she was skeptical at first.

“You’re going to be evaluated no matter what,” Hitchcock said. “It’s nice to have someone from outside come in. My observer was wonderful. She taught special ed, too. Just because I have all these years of experience doesn’t mean I know everything.”

But she worries about all the things an observer doesn’t see – like the time spent running a sensitive IEP meeting with parents, or carefully completing mounds of legal paperwork.

“I would love to be observed holding an IEP meeting,” Hitchcock said.

And she’s not sure other parts of her job are captured, either.

“It’s much more than academics,” she said. “I’m a counselor, a mother, a father, a feeder. I take time to be patient with kids if they’re upset. You can’t say, ‘You can’t do that – we’re doing math right now. You can’t cry.’ There are many things they don’t really see us do.”

Shamburg, though, said there are other teachers who have not been too happy about their peer observers – especially if the observers are young and brash and telling a veteran teacher how things should be done.

Building principals also play a key role as to whether teachers embrace the peer observations.

“You can feel it when you go into a building,” Shamburg said. “The (teachers’) attitude is mirrored by the principal.  They’re not always comfortable having a second eye.”

Childers’ number comes up

As for Childers, he knew he had one more observation this school year by Kenney. He found out five minutes before her visit. For the next 45 minutes, he would be watched closely.

LEAP peer observer talks to students during a recent teacher evaluation at West H.S.

A timer on a cord dangles from Childers’ neck – his way of making sure he stays track with his lesson plan, which he carries out with military precision. The 20 students sit in clusters, working silently at their desks. They draw pictures and write a sentence to go along with each of four vocabulary words: totalitarianism, fascism, Nazism, and militarism.

Many of his students are English language learners, so images are a key part of building vocabulary.

Kenney occasionally gets up and wanders around the room with her laptop. She listens in on quiet, one-on-one conversations. Sometimes, she asks students questions about what they’re doing, and why.

Childers watches his timer, then moves on to the next segment of the day’s lesson. He instructs students to write down the day’s “content objective.” Today, the objective is to analyze Hitler’s goals for Germany and the reasons for Japanese militarism. He shares stories about his own family members being persecuted in the Holocaust.

A follow-up visit

Kenney is back the next day over Childers’ lunch hour. This time, her visit is no surprise. This is the most delicate part of the LEAP peer observation process. Kenney has to talk to Childers about his teaching in a way that is non-judgmental. She has to keep her opinions out of it, and avoid “should” statements.

They talk about her earlier visit this school year and what he has worked on over the past several months based on Kenney’s first round of feedback. He says he has worked on creating “thoughtful” class groupings, and differentiating assignments. Both agree his classroom management skills are top-notch.

Peer observer Kenney meets with Childers a day after she visits his class.

Now, she has to deftly guide him to the conclusion she wants him to reach. She wants to see more passion about the subject matter, more creative ways to engage students in historical events.

“Not a moment is wasted in your class,” she tells him. “While working on things, you supported each kid, gave them feedback on their notes. I saw a difference from last class to this class.”

Kenney asks him to provide more context about the lesson she observed. She wants to know “the big idea.”

He talks about his students being able to write strong, 11-sentence paragraphs, support their opinions, and explain how facts or quotes support certain statements. His first answer is narrower than she wants it to be.

She tries a different tack: Say these kids are all married and have their own kids in high school. They’re now studying World War II. What would these former students – now parents -  say about what they learned in Mr. Childers’ class?

Childers pauses, then says students should remember the goals these countries had leading into World War II, the political motivations that led to war and connect them to current or future situations, such as the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Kenney wants more.  “In your heart of hearts, what’s really important; what sticks with them?”

“Half of my family is Jewish,” Childers says. “Half escaped; half didn’t. How can these things happen? How did totalitarian regimes come to be? …How can we make sure they don’t happen again in the future?”

In the end, Kenney encourages Childers to go deeper with his lessons. She offers him tangible ideas. She suggests he put students in the role of historian, have them pretend to be journalists on carrier planes when the atomic bomb was dropped. She suggests he have students think about whether they have ever felt repressed and without choices the way people living under totalitarian regimes may feel.

Then she asks Childers how she can do a better job as an observer.

He describes her feedback as “excellent.” He says he liked how she pushed him to think about the big idea, but he’s also a bit frustrated. Considering the amount of time in class and the fact that many students are well below grade level, is it more important to teach a student how to write a topic sentence or emphasize the big picture?

“I think they can do both,” Kenney says, before sending him a link to a book called Reading Like a Historian, along with some tip sheets.

For now, this observation is merely a way to help Childers improve. It has no bearing on his tenure status or movement up the pay scale. But, in 2014, it will – along his principal’s observations of him; a review of his professionalism, which includes how well he knows his students and their personal backgrounds; student test scores; and student feedback, which asks questions such as, ‘Are you always busy in this class?’ or ‘If you don’t understand something, does the teacher help explain it in a different way?’

What’s next for LEAP

The LEAP pilot will continue next year.

Peer observer Marianne Kenney records her thoughts in Nick Childers' U.S. History class at West.

The district will use the revised rubric. Teachers complained the first one was too long, and sometimes redundant. The new one is more focused. The new framework also better integrates instructional technology and best practices for linguistically diverse students. Most importantly, Dorland said, the revised framework is now tied to the Common Core Standards. 

The length of the observation was also increased based on teacher feedback in the early pilot, from 30 to 45 minutes. Ratings summary sheets are now provided to the teacher in advance of the final wrap-up meeting with the observer to make the meetings as efficient and useful as they can be.

The principal observations have also not been as strong as they should be, with very few teachers actually having been observed twice during the year by a principal, Shamburg said.

LEAP staffers are now starting to put more work into the student outcomes side of the equation (i.e. test scores), to be piloted next year. The tricky part is what measures to use in non-tested subject areas, such as music, art or library.

For Shamburg, a former lawyer turned educator, adding test scores into the mix demonstrates how “politics has overcome common sense.” To the public, it seems straightforward to link test scores to teacher evaluations. But in DPS, for instance, a majority – or about 70 percent of teachers – do not teach classes in which standardized tests are administered, which means the district must figure out what other reliable assessments to use.

Unlike many of his peers, Childers said he supports the idea of linking student achievement to teacher evaluations – the most controversial aspect of SB 10-191 – with conditions.

“If you didn’t have that it would be like having a sales job and none of performance tied to how many sales you made. If there’s not any learning going on, then there’s not any teaching going on.”

But Childers is adamant that the focus needs to be on where the student starts out the school year, and the growth he makes while in a class. It is not fair, Childers said, to apply the same benchmark goals to all students without taking into consideration where they started the school year. Some of his students start off at a third grade reading level.

Another huge piece that needs to be worked out is how each piece of the evaluation will be weighted for each teacher.

“The pieces that will be in the new evaluation system aren’t all there yet,” Shamburg acknowledged.

In 2014-2015 when LEAP becomes the law, things will be different. While no one category would result in a teacher losing non-probationary status or being placed on an improvement plan, an overall score will ultimately be used to determine these and other decisions.  However, non-probationary teachers in the “approaching” category would maintain their status even though their overall rating is not in the “effective” range.

Then, there’s the continued cost of LEAP. The Gates grant runs through next summer. The  main ongoing expense is  the peer observers. There are sure to be debates about how to best spend the $3.8 million it took to hire them.

“We are being deliberately more responsive and more open,” DPS spokesman Mike Vaughn said. “ We want to think about this long and hard, and make sure we take the time to get it right…(People) complain about tenure. But there has not been enough attention paid to how broken the support system for teachers has been.”

Denver Public Schools leaders were releasing limited information about the investigation, including the names of the schools, which have been confirmed by other multiple sources.

DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg said district staff conducted a “very thorough” analysis of 2011 assessment data for schools across the city.

“Where that analysis raised statistical concerns, we shared the information with the state Department of Education and asked the state to lead an examination,” Boasberg said. “I want to stress that the existence of this statistical analysis does not imply wrongdoing nor have we reached any conclusions.”

The Colorado Department of Education, though its legal counsel, the state Attorney General’s office, has hired a New York-based consulting firm to assist in the investigation. DPS is footing the bill. The same firm, Alvarez & Marsal, was hired in March to look into similar concerns in the Washington D.C. public schools.

“We do feel we have a duty to look further where we saw statistically unusual patterns, and that is why we asked the state to look into those cases,” Boasberg said. “Ultimately, the decisions on any potential consequences, if any wrongdoing is discovered, is for the district.”

Parents of students at the two schools were notified of the investigation and a districtwide communication to parents went out Tuesday afternoon.

Sources confirmed the analysis of DPS test results included an examination of erasure marks on student answer sheets. Results showed the two schools far exceeded district averages in the number of wrong answers erased and replaced with correct responses.

As part of their initial analysis, district officials placed testing monitors in a number of schools during the spring administration of the TCAP state exams. Last week, when third-grade reading TCAP results were released, both Beach Court and Hallett posted double-digit declines.

Beach Court dropped 40 percentage points on both the English and Spanish-language versions of the exams while Hallett, which did not administer the Spanish-language version, dropped 12 points. Remaining TCAP results will be released in late July.

Beach Court Principal Frank Roti has led the school since 2002 and Charmaine Keeton has been Hallett’s principal since 2008. Both principals were notified Tuesday of the investigation; DPS school board members were briefed Monday afternoon in closed session.

Beach Court has been the recipient of glowing media reports and district praise since 2005, when the high-poverty neighborhood school in Northwest Denver began posting strong increases in reading, writing and math.

In 2009, the district held a press conference at the school to announce DPS’ strong state test results and to applaud the work of Roti and his staff. The school also has received national praise, highlighted at NBC’s Education Nation event in 2010.

Hallett, also a high-poverty school, is a magnet program drawing students from across the district to its back-to-basics curriculum. The school was formerly known as Knight Fundamental Academy and its program was moved into the former Hallett Elementary building in Northeast Denver in 2009.

Both schools have recorded strong gains in test results, particularly Beach Court, which saw its reading proficiency rate rise from 40 percent in 2004 to 85 percent in 2011. Hallett’s reading proficiency hit 63 percent in 2004, dropped to the 50 percent range from 2005 to 2010 and then climbed from 50 percent in 2010 to 66 percent in 2011.

Beach Court is rated on the DPS performance report card as a “blue” or distinguished school, meaning it “exceeds expectations” and ranks as one of the district’s highest-performing schools. Hallett is rated as a “green” school, or one that “meets expectations” set by DPS. Both schools are rated “performance” by the state, its top rating.

It’s unclear whether additional years will be examined as part of the investigation or whether additional schools might become involved.

“This will not be a protracted investigation,” said Jo O’Brien, the state’s assistant commissioner for testing. “The due diligence on the data, initially performed by DPS, which was very thorough and very well done, has been confirmed and added to with the resources of the state’s larger metrics and methodology … We do not expect this to be long at all.”

O’Brien said it’s not unusual for a school or district to call and ask state officials to check out a statistical anomaly in the million-plus state tests administered annually. What is unusual about the data brought forth by DPS, she said, is “a level of severity that caught our eye.”

Tuesday’s action marks the first state-led cheating investigation at a Denver school, but it’s not the first time questions have been raised about gains in DPS.

Last year, USA Today conducted an analysis of reading and math scores in seven states, including Colorado, and found 69 Colorado schools where students moving from one grade to the next posted dramatic growth, or jumps greater than 99 percent of their peers in the state. Of that total, 29 percent were in DPS. Beach Court was on the list for gains made between 2006 and 2007.

But state assessment officials admitted Colorado leaders declined to pay for erasure analysis as part of their testing contract with CTB-McGraw Hill and their own statistical analysis did not flag those schools. DPS administrator Connie Casson said then that district leaders did not conduct systemic analysis of scores, such as what was done by USA Today, for potential cheating. She said they did look into incidents brought to their attention by staff in schools or by district instructional leaders poring over results.

In March, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a national look at cheating and cited DPS among districts with test score results warranting a second look.

“The accuracy of our student progress data is very important,” Boasberg said Tuesday. “Families … use the data to understand how kids are doing, and how much progress they’re making. Teachers use the data to inform their instruction, to know what to focus on, to know how to target their teaching, and therefore it’s very important that we have completely accurate information about how our kids are doing.”

Van Schoales, executive director of A+ Denver, a citizens advisory group to DPS, said the possibility of cheating is “incredibly disappointing and sad for the kids and families of the schools, if true.”

“It suggests that kids have a certain level of knowledge and skills that they don’t have,” Schoales said. “If you’re told in elementary school, you’re a good reader and writer and mathematician and you switch into another school and all of a sudden your scores drop, you could draw all kinds of conclusions that may not be right about why that is. The real reason why is because you don’t know those things in the first place.

“If you’re not self-aware about what you know and can do … then you’re really not in a position to get any better.”

Higher test scores can mean more money in Denver, where a performance-based system known as teacher and principal “ProComp” awards bonuses based on student growth and performance on state exams.

For example, a teacher enrolled in ProComp this year could earn bonuses topping $2,000 each if their students exceed district expectations on state exams or if their school is designated as a “high-growth” school or a “high-performing” school on the district’s annual report card.

Statewide, the full implementation of Senate Bill 10-191, the Great Teachers and Leaders Act, in 2014-15 will link student test scores with decisions about teacher and principal pay, retention and dismissal.

Because of those added consequences, as well as the state’s accountability system, which also relies heavily on the exams, O’Brien said the Department of Education this fall will debut enhanced test security policies.

Merino High School students test items in the "indoor recess boxes" they prepared to keep elementary students active on rainy days. Photo courtesy Buffalo School District.

“I think we’re having an effect,” said Kevin Garcia, 16, a sophomore at Center High School, and a member of the school’s bullying prevention group. “When I walk down the halls, I hear people repeating our slogan: ‘Be a buddy, not a bully.’ I think things are going in a positive direction.”

Across the state in Merino, in Logan County in northeast Colorado, the rain just gave teachers a chance to test out the indoor recess boxes that the older kids put together for the younger ones.

“We had noticed that when the weather was bad, they would just stay inside and read or play games that didn’t involve much physical activity,” said Lynn Zemanek, family and consumer science teacher at Merino High School.

“So my students surveyed the elementary school teachers about what they’d like to have included. Now, on rainy days, they can pull out those boxes during recess, and the kids can do juggling, or have relay races in the halls, or other active stuff.”

Telling the story to Washington

Meanwhile, Helayne Jones, president of the Colorado Legacy Foundation, was in Washington D.C. last week to tell federal officials all about what’s happening in Center and in Merino and in more than a dozen other rural school districts across Colorado where innovative health and wellness efforts are blossoming.

Jones talked about the work of the Legacy Foundation and the Colorado Coalition for Healthy Schools’ Healthy School Champions Scorecard, which rewards schools and districts for implementing health and wellness practices. Last month, 32 districts from around the state were awarded a total of $42,000 as part of the Scorecard program.

“Almost half the scorecard winners were rural districts,” Jones said. “Colorado was invited to present at this conference because of our work for rural school districts. Anecdotally, there aren’t a lot of others doing this kind of health and wellness work for rural schools, especially in the Rocky Mountain West.

“Our goal is to have rural superintendents learn from each other,” she said. “So often, superintendents say ‘We can’t do that because we’re a rural school district.’ We try to show them that, actually, rural schools districts are doing this work.”

Among those who heard about what’s going on in Colorado are U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

“This is one of the first times they’ve taken the approach of having two Cabinet members come together to develop recommendations. It reiterates that these topics – education and health – should not be siloed,” Jones said.

“Colorado and the Legacy Foundation were invited because we’re gaining recognition as a national model for improving student outcomes and boldly talking about the connection between student achievement and health and how safe students feel in school.”

Students come up with ideas adults don’t

The Buffalo School District – home to roughly 300 students, including about 100 at Merino High School – is a case in point.

The Colorado National Guard brought a climbing wall to a recent health fair the Buffalo School District helped organize.

“We’re as rural as you can get,” said Zemanek, who serves as advisor to the district’s health and wellness committee.

What’s unique about the district’s wellness committee is its makeup: It is composed entirely of students. Zemanek is convinced that’s made a difference in the ideas they’ve come up with and implemented. Ideas like the indoor recess boxes.

“Another thing is music,” she said. “We stumbled onto playing music purely by accident. We found that listening to music reduces snacking because it addresses the same part of the brain. So during breaks, we play people’s favorite songs, from classical to rock. And the mood of the school has changed. I think adults might not have come up with that idea.”

Ditto for the water infused with lemon. When Zemanek took her students to a conference at a hotel in California last year, the hotel served water with lemon slices in it. The kids were awed.

“When we came back, it was something they wanted to do every Friday, just to increase the amount of hydration,” she said. “I don’t think adult would have come up with that, either.”

Other accomplishments by the district’s wellness committee include building a school garden and greenhouse, and writing the protocols required by the local health department to use the produce grown in the greenhouse in the school’s salad bar.

They also labored to insure that 50 percent of the foods served at the concession stand during sporting events are healthy choices, and they began a series of daily physical activity and nutrition challenges.

“Every teacher has x-number of students for the challenges,” Zemanek said. “I have 15 kids on my team. The kids push the teacher and the teacher pushes the kids.”

Kids chose to focus on bullying in Center

In Center, the focus has been on bullying.

“We have a peer group of students that meets all year long to address various health and prevention issues, and bullying is one of those issues,” said Katrina Ruggles, the prevention and health education coordinator for the 575-student school district.

“They’ve done a variety of things, and the high school students are in charge of everything, from snacks to curriculum. They created their own survey about bullying, and they’re using the information from that to create a social norming campaign.”

They found that 17 percent of students reported being bullied.

“It’s not that big of a thing, but it’s here,” said Garcia. “I’ve been bullied. I’ve been affected by it, and it hurts. I don’t want other kids to go through that. If I can make an impact with this campaign, then I’d like to do it.”

Creating learning laboratories for the state

Jones said the Legacy Foundation’s partnership with the Colorado Department of Education is key to promoting initiatives such as these, both in rural as well as urban and suburban school districts.

“In some ways, we help the department to have a learning laboratory. We create pilots to test out, get early adapters for the work the department is trying to get done statewide. We’re really a new breed of public/private partnership,” she said.

While places like Center and Merino are far removed from the Front Range population centers, what happens there is just as important as what happens in Denver or Jefferson County, Jones said.

“As a state, we have to focus on every child. We can’t focus only on the large population centers,” she said. “Education shouldn’t vary by zip code. Besides, a family in metro Denver today could be relocated and wind up in a rural school district tomorrow. Why should their quality of education be any different?”

Rep. Tom Massey said, “There’s no question” that improving state revenues made the early childhood literacy bill and a no-cuts school finance act possible. Massey, a Poncha Springs Republican and chair of the House Education Committee, was at the center of most education debates this year. His name was on 38 measures, most of them related to schools or higher education.

Sen. Bob Bacon, D-Fort Collins and chair of Senate Education, also cited a cooperative spirit among lawmakers, interest groups and others as key to the session: “Time after time, we came together.” Bacon was a key figure in Senate debates on the literacy bill.

What the session means to you

As a legislative session unfolds, it’s often hard to translate the legalistic language of bills into impacts on real people. And, as with most legislation, the effects of many 2012 bills won’t be felt until after state bureaucrats, school administrators and college leaders have worked out the details of implementing the new laws.

But here a high-level look at what this year’s education legislation will mean for parents and students, teachers and administrators, bureaucrats and others:

Young learners, parents and teachers – More than 20,000 K-3 students who struggle with reading will get additional, structured help – and a few of them may find themselves repeating third grade. Schools will be required to involve parents more closely in efforts to improve reading skills. Teachers in the early grades will have to learn some new skills for teaching literacy. All of this will flow from the early literacy bill, House Bill 12-1238 – see summary.

Counselors and troubled kids – An easing of zero-tolerance discipline laws will mean teachers, counselors and vice principals will have more flexibility in school discipline and will have to brush up on new techniques. Some students who otherwise would have been expelled or suspended likely will find themselves staying in school. And some administrators will have more paperwork to file tracking the impact of new policies. The original discipline bill, Senate Bill 12-046, had to be folded into another measure because of a parliamentary screw-up; read the summary here.

High school students – There may be more tests to take in the state’s high schools, given passage of a bill providing $1 million in state aid for districts to give Accuplacer skills assessment tests. The hope is the tests will give early indications of student deficiencies that can be fixed before kids get to college. This plan, originally Senate Bill 12-047, also had to be merged into another bill. See the summary.

Rep. Tom Massey, R-Poncha Springs

Future students – There are still lots of hurdles to be jumped before Colorado has permanent replacements for the TCAP tests, but a bill requiring the State Board of Education to commit to one of two groups developing multi-state tests is one step down that road.

College students – Some students at state colleges and universities will be freed from the current system of having to take remedial classes before they can take for-credit courses. House Bill 12-1155 (see summary) will allow more targeted remediation for specific skill gaps while student take regular classes.

Future college students – In future years, graduates of Adams, Metro and Western state colleges will have the word “university” on their sheepskins, thanks to three name-change bills passed this year.

Adults who want degrees – The state is making a push to increase the number of Coloradans with degrees or certificates. Senate Bill 12-045 is supposed to make it easier for adults with some community college credits and some four-year credits to combine them and earn an associate’s degree. And House Bill 12-1072 is intended to create easier ways for adults to earn college credit for such “life experiences” as professional and military training.

Parents – There may be a bit more school paperwork to fill out because of Senate Bill 12-036, which tightens requirements for parent consent before students can fill out various surveys and questionnaires. Parents won’t have to worry when the Oct. 1 enrollment count day falls on a religious holiday; count day will be moved. But parents won’t be able to opt kids out of achievement tests, get a sales-tax break on back-to-school purchases, petition for conversion of low-performing schools or sit in on district-union bargaining sessions. Bills proposing all those things didn’t make it. And a State Board rule requiring parents be notified when school employees are arrested will expire because the legislature didn’t ratify it.

Teachers – Teachers with national board certifications will receive $4,800 stipends for working at high-needs schools via House Bill 12-1261. Two sets of regulations intended to implement the new educator evaluation system were ratified by the legislature, meaning that system as designed by the Colorado Department of Education is moving ahead. The legislature also provided CDE with some extra funding for implementation work.

Higher ed policymakers – A new law on regulation of for-profit colleges will enable the state Department of Higher Education to gather more information about enrollment, degrees granted and other data from those institutions. That in turn will provide a fuller picture of higher education in the state as policymakers try to increase the number of degrees and certificates granted. This was yet one more bill that had to be folded into another measure; read the summary here.

Charter school administrators – A bill setting uniform minimum standards for charter school applications and authorization (Senate Bill 12-061) passed, but a measure that would have encouraged districts to follow “model” standards of authorizing didn’t (House Bill 12-1225). And some charters may have an easier time qualifying for Building Excellent Schools Today grants because of Senate Bill 12-121.

Lunch ladies – If they haven’t done so already, kitchen administrators will have to get rid of foods with added trans fats under the terms of Senate Bill 12-068. But the measure is riddled with exceptions; get the details in this summary.

One issue is big every year

The state provides about two-thirds of K-12 operating funds every year, and the legislature sets the combination of state and local revenue used to pay for schools.

The recession and resulting state revenue drops forced the 2009, 2010 and 2011 legislative sessions to cut school funding. This year was a different story because improving revenues allowed the legislature to keep school funding stable at about $5.3 billion in 2012-13, an average of $6,474.24 per student.

“School finance was one of the victories,” said Bacon, a view Massey shares.

That doesn’t mean rising costs, such as for pensions, aren’t going to force individual districts to make cuts. But at the statehouse, there definitely was less tension around school finance this year.

Improved revenues also allowed lawmakers to keep higher education budget cuts to “only” about $7 million below current levels.

Get more information on school finance in the Education News Colorado archive and in this legislative staff document. And find out how much funding is allocated to individual districts in our database.

What didn’t get done

There was a lot of speculation early in the session that online schools and the BEST construction program would be big education issues. As it turned out, neither was.

Senate President Brandon Shaffer, D-Longmont, promised a bill to better regulate online schools but ended up not touching the issue, partly because of his focus on a jobs bills. Sen. Pat Steadman, D-Denver, considered online legislation but ended up not introducing any. He had plenty on his plate, including membership on the Joint Budget Committee and sponsorship of the civil unions bill.

There also was chatter about legislation to tighten up the BEST program and perhaps cap its income from state lands revenues. A funding bill never got introduced, and a bill to change structural review procedures for BEST projects and to change the board was killed.

There also were predictions that the December 2011 court decision in the Lobato v. State lawsuit would hang over the 2012 session. But “Lobato” was a word that didn’t get uttered much. An amendment to fund a study of the cost of Lobato compliance was withdrawn, and a resolution urging legislative legal intervention in the case was killed. The case, of course, is on appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court.

Dead for this year

The most prominent education bill that failed was Senate Bill 12-015, the so-called ASSET bill intended to reduce college tuition rates for undocumented students. This year marked the sixth time such legislation has been attempted. Backers promise a new version next year.

In addition to bills mentioned above, here are some other education bills that were killed or hadn’t been considered by the time the adjournment deadline came.

• House Bill 12-1067 – Contribution limits in school board campaigns
• House Bill 12-1235 – Requirements for energy efficiency in new school buildings
• House Bill 12-1252 – Online posting of college and university financial information
• House Bill 12-1280 – Establishment of a Western Slope gaming hall with video gambling machines, partly to fund community colleges and scholarships
• Senate Bill 12-098 – Requiring CPR for high school graduation

Seven bills proposing significant changes in the Public Employees’ Retirement Association, which covers all Colorado teachers and many other public employees, either were killed or didn’t make it out of committee.

A lot of farewells

Sen. Bob Bacon, D-Fort Collins

Here’s who’s leaving the two committees:

House Education (13 members)

• Massey (term-limited)
• Don Beezley, R-Broomfield (chose not to run)
• Andy Kerr, D-Lakewood (running for Senate against Summers)
• Judy Solano, D-Brighton (term-limited)
• Ken Summers, R- Lakewood (running for Senate against Kerr)
• Nancy Todd, D-Aurora (term-limited but running for Senate)

Senate Education (7 members)

• Bacon (term-limited)
• King, R-Colorado Springs (district changed by redistricting; chose not to run)
• Spence, R-Centennial (term-limited)

And several other members of both committees are running for reelection, so some may or may not be back.

See the full archive of EdNews’ 2012 legislative stories.

A student at work in Sheridan's Fort Logan Elementary, where Wednesday's results show third-grade reading scores are on the rise.

Results of the first administration of the Transitional Colorado Assessment Program, which is replacing the Colorado Student Assessment Program as the state shifts to new academic standards, show 73.9 percent of third-graders scored proficient or advanced.

Proficiency rates have hovered between 70 and 74 percent since at least 2003.

That leaves 25 percent of the state’s third-graders – more than 16,000 mostly 9-year-olds – struggling to master basic literacy skills.

More boys than girls need literacy help as third-grade tests provide the first look at a reading gender gap that persists through high school. A seven-point gap separates girls from boys on the 2012 third-grade exam; the most recent tenth-grade exams revealed a 13-point divide.

Gaps are similarly revealed by income and ethnicity on the third-grade reading tests, with 26 points separating students eligible for federal lunch aid and their more affluent peers. And 25-point gaps divide Hispanic and black students from their white classmates.

Those gaps have been cited in recent legislative debates about a literacy bill but the bill is not linked to statewide exams. Instead, the bill – approved Wednesday by state lawmakers – calls for existing early childhood literacy tests to assess whether third-graders meet a “significant reading deficiency” standard to be set by the State Board.

Highs and lows among schools

Some familiar school names show up at both ends of the spectrum in gains and declines on the TCAP results.

Center’s Haskin Elementary, recently profiled by EdNews, saw its scores rise 35 percentage points in a single year, from 41 percent of students achieving reading proficiency to 76 percent.

Haskin Elementary Principal Kathy Kulp works after school with students as part of an intense literacy focus in the Center School District.

The 310-student school in the rural San Luis Valley is wrapping up its second year of a three-year, $1.6 million federal School Improvement Grant, awarded to the nation’s lowest-performing schools.

Last year’s scores also saw a big jump, from 28 percent proficiency to 41 percent.

Center Superintendent George Welsh, a key player in the recent Lobato school funding lawsuit, said the results show more money spent well can make a difference.

“I think the results we are achieving are a real life indication that a significant infusion of dollars, spent wisely in targeted areas, can produce the kinds of results the state has striven for through the education system it has designed,” he said.

“Without the training and resource opportunities that were afforded to us through our turnaround grant, we would probably still be where we were in 2010 when only 28 percent of our third-graders could read at grade level.”

Part of Center’s federal funding went to Lindamood-Bell, a for-profit company focused on intensive literacy training, including implementing summer and after-school academies for struggling readers. The company moved a trainer into Center for 18 months.

At the other end of the spectrum, Denver’s Beach Court Elementary saw its third-grade scores drop by more than 40 percentage points on both the English and Spanish-language reading exams over the past two years.

Beach Court, a high-poverty neighborhood school in Northwest Denver, has been publicly lauded over the years for its high performance.

This year’s, 40 percent of the school’s third-graders scored proficient or advanced on the English exam, down from 78 percent last year and 85 percent the year before. On the Spanish version, the proficiency rate was 48 percent, down from 73 percent in 2011 and 92 percent in 2010.

Beach Court’s veteran principal, Frank Roti, did not return a call seeking comment.

“The district regularly reviews all test scores for any signs of unusual patterns and takes the necessary follow-up action,” DPS spokesman Mike Vaughn said.

Asked if the district sent monitors to Beach Court during TCAP testing this year, Vaughn responded that monitors were in “a couple dozen schools” to ensure “proper testing procedures” were followed.

He said he did not know if Beach Court was among them and declined additional comment.

Results of school reform efforts

In terms of growth, Center’s Haskin led all 14 of Colorado’s SIG elementary schools – meaning they’re the recipients of federal grants after having been deemed among the lowest-performing in the U.S.

But Westminster Elementary in the Adams 50 Westminster school district wasn’t far behind, with a 34-point gain over last year.

Five other SIG schools also posted double-digit gains in 2012; only one SIG school, Mapleton’s Meadow Community School, saw a decline.

Sheridan’s Fort Logan Elementary, another SIG school recently profiled by EdNews, continued its gradual but steady increase. Its reading proficiency rate grew to 52 percent, up 7 points in the past two years.

Nathaniel Stuart, a student at Sheridan's Fort Logan Elementary, focuses on literacy.

Denver Public Schools touted gains at several schools undergoing major reforms, including two receiving federal SIG grants.

At West Denver’s Greenlee Elementary, part of a contentious 2009 reform proposal, third-graders posted a 21-point gain over last year. Fifty-five percent of third-graders were reading at grade level on this year’s exams.

Greenlee’s principal was replaced in fall 2010 when a new literacy program was adopted. The school also was restructured, shifting from a K-8 to an elementary school.

In Far Northeast Denver, two elementary schools that were part of another controversial reform plan approved in 2011, also saw gains.

Both Green Valley and McGlone elementaries saw 17-point increases in third-grade reading proficiency over last year.  Reform efforts at those schools included the requirement that teachers reapply for their jobs this past fall.

Another Denver school reform effort, the teacher-led Math and Science Leadership Academy, also saw strong gains. MSLA third-graders nearly doubled their reading proficiency, from 24 percent to 52 percent.

School district ups and downs

DPS continued to lead the state’s largest districts in reading proficiency growth, with 59 percent of third-graders performing at grade level.

That’s the highest result achieved by the district since state testing began, according to a press release.

Results from the state’s ten largest districts ranged from a 3-point bump in Denver to a 2-point drop in Fort Collins.

Rankings for the big ten districts align closely, though not completely, with poverty rates – Boulder and Douglas County, with poverty below 20 percent, produced the highest scores. Denver and Aurora, with poverty rates topping 65 percent, produced the lowest scores.

Among all metro-area districts, Adams 50 Westminster had the biggest single-year gain.

The district, which has eliminated traditional grade levels and advances students based on proficiency, saw its third-grade reading scores increase six points, from 41 percent proficiency to 47 percent.

Littleton Public Schools produced the highest results of all metro-area districts, with an 88 percent proficiency rate. Its growth also continues, improving six points since 2010.

Another district of interest, the state Charter School Institute, saw its overall third-grade proficiency rate decline eight points, from 77 percent to 69 percent.

Two other trends are evident in the TCAP results, with fewer students taking Spanish-language exams and small districts reporting no public results because they have few test-takers.

Colorado state exams are available in Spanish only in grades 3 and 4. The number of third-graders taking the Spanish version of the reading tests has declined from 1,500 in 2008 to 1,200 in 2012.

And the number of Colorado school districts with no public test scores – meaning they have fewer than 16 third-graders taking the state exams – continues its gradual climb. The state doesn’t report scores for fewer numbers because of privacy concerns.

In 2011 and 2012, 48 of the state’s 182 districts reported fewer than 16 young test-takers. This year, the Agate school district reported a single third-grader. In 2010, 44 districts had no public third-grade scores.

A somber Gov. John Hickenlooper announced he'll call a special session of the legislature to consider civil unions.

Also Wednesday, the House accepted the significant Senate amendments to House Bill 12-1238, the sweeping early childhood literacy program, and re-passed it 58-7.

And Senate Bill 12-068, the measure that bans use of industrially produced trans fats in school foods, passed 36-29 in House and 18-17 in Senate. The much-amended bill survived repeated efforts to kill it but was significantly watered down, containing exceptions for food programs that use federal guidelines, for smaller school districts and for food provided at fundraisers.

Here are the bills that missed a key deadline and were effectively killed as standalone measures because of Tuesday night’s House stalemate:

Senate Bill 12-172, which would require the State Board of Education to commit Colorado to one of two groups developing multistate achievement tests in language arts and math.

Senate Bill 12-046, which would eliminate most zero-tolerance school discipline requirements, give school districts more flexibility in discipline and encourage schools to reduce use of expulsions, suspensions and referrals to police.

Senate Bill 12-047, which would provide state funding to districts that chose to administer basic skills testing such as the Accuplacer to high school students.

Senate Bill 12-164, which would modernize state regulation of for-profit colleges that offer bachelors and graduate degrees and add some consumer protections for students.

Here’s what the Senate did to save them:

• The texts of the discipline and Accuplacer bills were added to House Bill 12-1345, the 2012-13 school funding bill, which then got 27-8 final Senate approval. The House agreed and re-passed it 65-0.
• The content of the multistate testing bill was added to House Bill 12-1240, an omnibus cleanup bill of various education laws. This bill went to a conference committee to change one letter in the bill (honestly, but it’s too complicated to explain). The conference committee report was accepted by both houses and re-passed late in the evening. This bill has gone through lots of ups and downs and caused lots of heartburn for the Department of Education. Little noticed in all the debate is the fact that the bill delays some Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids deadlines, such as that for creation of specialized diplomas. And the testing provisions added to the bill are potentially important.
• And the text of the higher education regulation bill was added to House Bill 12-1155, another higher ed measure that originally dealt with remediation procedures. It passed 35-0 in the Senate and 65-0 in the House.

The amendments were offered by various members of the Senate Education Committee from both parties. There was no significant debate on any of the changes in either House.

Colorado has relatively strict rules that restrict bill content to the subject listed in a bill’s title. But lawmakers and staff members determined that the titles of the three bills were broad enough to accommodate the orphan measures.

In a related development, an emotional Gov. John Hickenlooper announced Wednesday afternoon that he will call a special session of the legislature to reconsider civil unions and some other orphan bills. (With Wednesday’s rescue of the four education bills, no education issues are expected to be part of the special session.)

Tuesday night’s House problems were keyed to the fact that the state constitution requires bills receive preliminary and final floor consideration on different days. All of the orphan bills were scheduled for preliminary consideration Tuesday, meaning they had to pass by midnight in order to receive final votes Wednesday.

House Republican leaders didn’t want to bring the civil unions bill to the floor, where it was expected to pass. The game of political chicken with Democrats lead to a recess that kept representatives off the floor for much of Tuesday evening, running out the clock for civil unions and 30 other bills.

For the record

Here are other education bills of note that crossed the finish line on the last day of 2012 session:

• House Bill 12-1261 – $4,800 stipends for nationally board certified teachers who work in high-need schools
• House Bill 12-1350 – Resident tuition eligibility for some military dependents
• Senate Bill 12-051 – Suggested contracting procedures for school districts
• House Bill 12-1043 – Updating of concurrent enrollment law

Also receiving final approval was House Bill 12-1086, which ratifies a large number of new state agency rules, including teacher evaluation appeals but not including parent notification of teacher arrests.