HB25-1278, Education Accountability System

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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