The Senate Education Committee Thursday voted 6-0 to pass Senate Bill 08-212 to Appropriations, the first big step for the bipartisan Preschool to Postsecondary Alignment Act.
Significant amendments were made to the bill, but none that substantially change its major goals of updating school content standards and expanding them to grades not now covered, changing tests to match those new standards and creating definitions of school readiness for young children and of postsecondary and workforce readiness for high schoolers. The overall philosophical goal is to make all students ready for college, if that's what they choose to do.
The bill, pushed by Gov. Bill Ritter and a bipartisan group of sponsors, is the most closely watched education legislation of the 2008 session.
With one exception, the 20 witnesses who testified praised the bill's philosophy and goals, but many had questions or cautions about the details, especially how it will be paid for.
The real action didn't start until three and a half hours into the hearing, when testimony ended and the committee dug into a tall stack of amendments. Most were offered by committee chair Sen. Sue Windels, D-Aurora, who has worked closely with a number of education interest groups on their concerns about the bill.
But the most significant amendment was offered by one of the sponsors, Sen. Josh Penry, R-Fruita. It changes elements of the bill's complex timetable, speeding up some things and slowing down others, and was the product of negotiations between the sponsors, Ritter's office and various institutional players in the debate.
The net effect of the new calendar is that the full reform program wouldn't roll out in the schools until at least the fall of 2012, a year later than originally proposed.
Here are the key elements of the new calendar:
- By this Dec. 15, the state board will adopt the description of school readiness, and the board and the Colorado Commission on Higher Education will adopt the description of postsecondary and workforce readiness. (These benchmarks originally had been set later.)
- By Dec. 15, 2009, the board will adopt new K-12 content standards.
- A year later, by Dec. 15, 2010, the board will adopt recommended new assessments for school readiness and K-12, and the board and commission will adopt assessments for postsecondary and workforce readiness.
- The legislature will have until June 11, 2010, to adopt whatever laws are necessary to adopt the new K-12 tests.
- By the end of 2011, local school districts and charters will have to review and revise their content standards to meet or exceed the state's, adopt new curricula if necessary and align their high school curricula with the postsecondary and workforce description. New standards, new tests and postsecondary and workforce readiness standards would have to be implemented by Dec. 15, 2012.
- The CCHE would have until Dec. 15, 2014, to align its college admissions standards to the new system.
Another calendar change was made by a Windels amendment that would require all the boards to review the whole system every six years. (As introduced the bill proposed four years; an earlier version proposed every two years.)
Other significant Windels amendments changed the bill to:
- Require an outside study of the program's costs. Penry and cosponsor Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, didn't necessarily like this one. But some groups, such as the Colorado Association of School Boards pushed hard for it, and it passed 5-2. (Looks like potential work for Augenblick, Palaich and Associates.)
- Set up regional meetings of working educators to provide advice on creating the new system.
- Alter the definition of the individual learning evaluations that will be done for preschool students.
- Add language recognizing that new program would require teacher training.
Another Windels amendment that would have inserted language about reducing test "stress" for students and controlling the amount of time spent on testing was defeated on a 3-3 vote. (The committee's seventh member, Sen. Ron Tupa, D-Boulder, by that point had left to pick up his kids.)
The witnesses who testified earlier in the hearing represented
superintendents, think tanks, Padres Unidos and the “4 Cs” – the
Colorado Education Association, the Colorado Associations of School
Boards, the Colorado Association of School Executives and the Colorado
Children’s Campaign. Most supported the bill, but all had questions,
particularly about cost.
Terri Hill, executive director of the somewhat-more-conservative Fund
for Colorado’s Future and former education advisor to Gov. Bill Owens,
also raised the question of cost, noting the Colorado Department of
Education is one of the more thinly staffed of any state's.
The testimony that was most interesting in terms of what it didn’t say
came from the Colorado Department of Higher Education. Lobbyist John
Karakoulakis read a brief statement from Executive Direction David
Skaggs, who said the department “endorses the concept and framework,”
was still analyzing the plan and probably would have some amendments
when the bill shows up in the House Education Committee.
Randy DeHoff, a member of the State Board of Education, said that body
hasn’t yet taken a position but expects to support the bill. He
predicted the bill would lead to the end of the current CSAPs at the high school level.
The one clear dissenter in the witness parade was Rona Wilensky,
principal of New Vista High School in Boulder and an education advisor
to former Gov. Dick Lamm. She questioned the center premise of the bill
– that preparation for college and work should be the same. “I’m deeply
concerned about that definition.”
“I may be the only person in Colorado saying I’m opposed to this bill,” she quipped.
(Wilensky as written extensively about the issue on this site. Click here for a recent blog post.)
Penry and Romer said the bill will have a fiscal note estimating some of its costs by the time it's considered in Appropriations. That will be closely watched, especially by school districts concerned about the longtime impacts, but the note may not cover those.
Penry seemed a little frustrated with the tinkering, and he predicted there would be more as the bill moved on, especially in the House. He said he hopes Ritter "will be our backup" on attempts to water the measure down.
The bill's pretty much on ice for a week, since much of the Senate's time next week will be taken up by consideration of the 2008-09 long appropriations bill.
Click here for the bill text, although it doesn't yet reflect Thursday's amendments.
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