DENVER– Governor Bill Ritter signed SB 191, the controversial teacher assessment bill passed at the end of the session into law Thursday. The governor said the bill was the capstone of his administration’s work on education policy and a model for education nationwide.
While Gov. Bill Ritter navigates the media storm set in motion by the surprise announcement that he will not run for reelection in 2010, Lt. Governor Barbara O’Brien is busy wrapping up the Colorado application to win K-12 school funding through the federal Department of Education’s $5 billion Race to the Top program. The program aims to reward innovative approaches to education reform. O’Brien is proposing new student performance testing and teacher evaluation, among other things. She spoke with the Colorado Independent over the holidays about the proposal and why many districts in the state have yet to sign on to the application.
Last week, the Colorado Department of Education released an outside audit of standardized testing procedures at Pueblo’s Cesar Chavez Academy. In essence, the audit found that while an unusually high number of students received accommodations (usually extra time or…
DENVER — A corps of turnaround experts who would travel from failing school to failing school, a computerized, multimedia test to replace the Colorado Student Assessment Program, and a “360 degree” evaluation for teachers mirroring business-world performance evaluations were just some of the ideas Race to the Top school reform workgroups presented Friday to Gov. Bill Ritter, Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien and Commissioner of Education Dwight Jones.
For the first time in 10 years, Colorado will adopt new K-12 academic standards this December. “These standards are not like the old ones,” the Colorado Department of Education website warns. “They are not a curriculum or an…
DENVER– In a “state of the state” address at a Rotary Club polio benefit Thursday, Governor Ritter said natural gas and nuclear energy should be embraced as part of a clean energy portfolio, that he was “agnostic” on whether schools should be public or charter, and that he would ask voters to eliminate the budgetary constraints caused by the state’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights should he be elected to a second term.
Goodbye, CSAP. Hello, what? That’s the question in Colorado, as the Department of Education starts work next month on replacing the current mandatory state exam.
It’s crucial work, since the test may soon be expected to tell us not only…
On Friday came the annual start to the school season here, marked as ever by the release of the Colorado Student Assessment Program scores.
And while the Colorado Department of Education’s Friday press release predictably led with the…
One of Bernadette Lopez’s friends asked her if she was using witchcraft. The third grade teacher at Denver’s Beach Court Elementary School laughed it off.
Lopez, a Duke University graduate, and her 2006-2007 teaching partner, Amanda O’Grady, didn’t…
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