{"id":53116,"date":"2020-06-25T13:11:39","date_gmt":"2020-06-25T19:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/how-much-should-we-spend-to-see-how-far-colorado-students-are-behind\/"},"modified":"2020-06-25T19:11:39","modified_gmt":"2020-06-25T19:11:39","slug":"how-much-should-we-spend-to-see-how-far-colorado-students-are-behind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/how-much-should-we-spend-to-see-how-far-colorado-students-are-behind\/","title":{"rendered":"How much should we spend to see how far Colorado students are behind?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Globes
Globes sit in a classroom at Telluride Intermediate School.<\/span>William Woody\/Special to the Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

How do you measure the academic strides a student has made since last spring or clarify<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a complicated question in a summer bookended by uncertainty, with the coronavirus having forced Colorado students into remote learning this spring and many districts still pinning down their instruction plans for the fall.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s made even more complicated by a precarious budget year as lawmakers made significant cuts to education while trying to fill a $3 billion budget shortfall.<\/p>\n

The mounting pressure to understand where students are academically and the scarcity of education dollars to use toward that effort have created a kind of tug-of-war between education advocates and some parents and teachers. A group of Colorado education organizations is urging Commissioner Katy Anthes and the Colorado Department of Education to invest federal funds into a diagnostic assessment that would help teachers better understand students\u2019 learning gains or losses. The proposal has sparked backlash among another group that includes parents, teachers and their union, who insist that such a test would waste precious dollars at a time students need support for their social and emotional wellbeing.<\/p>\n

Less than a week after the coalition of education organizations sent a letter to Anthes, an online petition on change.org launched to rail against that kind of assessment. The petition drew more than 1,300 signatures by Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Denver parent Paul Vranas, who helped conceive the petition, said he would prefer the federal CARES Act money be used for resources that will support educators and meet the social-emotional needs of students who have endured trauma from the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\"Traci
Traci Whitfield, a fourth grade teacher at Dupont Elementary in the Adams 14 school district, teaches a class during remote learning.<\/span>Provided by Adams 14<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cThe COVID-19 virus has amplified the challenge of having limited resources in our (state) to deliver education,\u201d Vranas wrote in a letter to Anthes and the Colorado State Board of Education<\/a>. \u201cCreatively funding the delivery of educational and emotional supports is what our children need, not another standardized test.\u201d<\/p>\n

CDE spokeswoman Dana Smith confirmed that Anthes and the department received notice of the petition. She said that the issue of a diagnostic assessment was not raised when CDE conducted a survey of districts\u2019 needs and a survey of ideas on ways to spend funds Colorado received from the Every Student Succeeds Act within the federal CARES Act.<\/p>\n

Colorado was awarded more than $120 million from the U.S. Department of Education. Those dollars fall under the ESSER Fund. Of that total, CDE can reserve no more than 10%, equal to more than $12 million, to apply to emergency needs to address issues stemming from the coronavirus. A portion of those dollars could go toward a diagnostic assessment.<\/p>\n

Van Schoales, president of A+ Colorado, one of the organizations pressing CDE for a diagnostic assessment, estimates that an assessment already created by a private vendor for Colorado\u2019s more than 900,000 public school students would cost at least a few million dollars.<\/p>\n

Smith said CDE will speak with stakeholders and will consult the state board to see if members want to discuss the potential of a diagnostic assessment at an upcoming board meeting.<\/p>\n

CDE will also ask its assessment department to think through different approaches and the time and cost it would take to implement different approaches with a diagnostic assessment, Smith said.<\/p>\n

Testing versus trust<\/div>\n

Administering a diagnostic assessment in the fall is not a novel concept. In fact, it happens each school year, said Colorado Education Association President Amie Baca-Oehlert.<\/p>\n

Teachers assess where their students are at the start of each year, some of them with diagnostic assessments provided by their district, Baca-Oehlert said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no need to spend our precious, very limited resources to go to private corporations for testing,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need to trust our educators to do what they do best.\u201d<\/p>\n

The state doesn\u2019t need to spend money on a test to tell educators what they already know \u2014 that students\u2019 learning was interrupted this past spring, she said, especially when those financial resources could cater to student needs.<\/p>\n

Baca-Oehlert added that it\u2019s critical to make sure that resources \u201care going to the right places,\u201d particularly as students return to school in the fall after experiencing trauma related to the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Troy Hubbell, a Denver teacher who specializes in special education for elementary school students, created the petition on Saturday to discourage CDE from pouring funds into an arbitrary state test. If transparency in how kids are doing is the goal, Hubbell said, it would be more useful to focus dollars on training teachers and finding the research-based best way to measure kids and empower teachers to use that for instruction.<\/p>\n

\"Giselle
Giselle Molina works from home on school assignments during the COVID-19 virus outbreak. Molina is a recipient of a Ninth Grade Success Grant at Center Consolidated Schools.<\/span>Courtesy photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Hubbell also highlights the need to invest resources in keeping class sizes manageable and providing social-emotional support outlets for students \u2014 the top priority for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to make kids feel safe again,\u201d he said. For a lot of children, especially those living in poverty, their days aren\u2019t filled with very much predictability. School is largely the place where life feels safe and predictable to them. Students lost that, and educators can\u2019t start addressing the academic deficits until they can get kids in a mental space where they can learn again, Hubbell said.<\/p>\n

He worries that setting aside funding for a diagnostic assessment will drain resources without the promise of helpful outcomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re going to get more information that\u2019s not helpful and have less money for things that are,\u201d Hubbell said.<\/p>\n

Vranas, the Denver parent who was part of the idea for a petition, said parents like him want their kids to be focused on learning, not on taking tests.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s many parents, including myself, that feel that a standardized test, in and of itself, will not lead to better educational results and that there\u2019s plenty of assessments that happen in the classroom to help inform teachers of where their kids are at,\u201d said Vranas, who has two children, including one entering kindergarten in Denver Public Schools in the fall.<\/p>\n

The process of understanding where students are at is half the equation of what goes into a teacher\u2019s job, he noted.<\/p>\n

He added that standardized testing has been the promise of reform policy for the past 20 years but that it hasn\u2019t advanced student achievement in the way it set out to.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s time to get back to the basics of focusing funding on the delivery of education,\u201d Vranas said.<\/p>\n

A necessary starting point<\/div>\n

But the organizations advocating for a diagnostic assessment are clear that it wouldn\u2019t just be another test.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s useful because it provides important baseline information coming out of the most disruptive state of education we\u2019ve seen in my lifetime,\u201d said Nicholas Martinez, co-founder and executive director of Transform Education Now, one of the 10 organizations calling for state investment in a diagnostic assessment.<\/p>\n

Martinez said the state and schools owe it to families, to the community and to students to understand where students are walking back in out of remote learning. He said he knows there would be an appetite among some Colorado parents for that kind of an assessment. He\u2019s heard from parents asking for it.<\/p>\n

Since the beginning of the coronavirus and remote learning, he said, families have asked how they are going to know the progress of their student and how they\u2019re going to know if their child is prepared for what\u2019s next.<\/p>\n

Martinez isn\u2019t an assessments expert, but he knows that a test could offer a starting point to grasp how far a child has progressed beyond what was expected or where gaps exist.<\/p>\n

\"Cecilia
Cecilia Maldonado, 8, does an online math lesson at her home in Timnath on March 25.<\/span>Valerie Mosley\/Special to The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cYou then have additional information on the needs of your child,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Martinez realizes there are plenty of other important funding demands on the table, including the need to support classrooms and educators along with the social-emotional wellness of kids.<\/p>\n

But this kind of assessment ranks just as high. \u201cAnd without this information, how do we know where to start?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

He recognizes the challenge of trying to fund all necessities in a year with steep budget cuts to education and said it\u2019s important to lead with equity in mind \u2014 which includes making information like student data \u201cavailable to families who may or may not have been disproportionately affected by remote learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

When budgets get cut, they become less equitable, Martinez said, \u201cand if we don\u2019t have as much information as possible those cuts are disproportionately going to affect Black communities, Latino communities and our working class communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schoales, of A+ Colorado, said the organizations anticipate that there are districts that may have a good idea of where their students fall academically but not all schools do. It\u2019s a patchwork across the state.<\/p>\n

Large districts have greater capacity to invest in assessments, but smaller districts often don\u2019t, he said. And in some cases, large districts make mistakes in selecting diagnostic assessments.<\/p>\n

Similarly, some teachers excel at determining their students\u2019 academic standing and others don\u2019t, Schoales said, and teachers aren\u2019t professional assessment designers.<\/p>\n

A state-funded diagnostic assessment is just one more tool for teachers, he said.<\/p>\n

Schoales said he has suggested to CDE staff that the department pull together a group of people who represent school districts and assessment experts to help guide them.<\/p>\n

He worries about the futures of students if the state doesn\u2019t move forward with a diagnostic assessment at a time there are significant gaps in areas like resources and capacity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would expect things to get worse,\u201d Schoales said.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, journalist-owned news outlet exploring issues of statewide interest. Sign up for a newsletter and read more at coloradosun.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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