Senate Education [Mar 16, 2026]

Roll. Senators Bright.

Gizel.

Rich. Here. Snyder.

One more time.

Mr. Chair. Here. All present and we can begin our business. So first we're going to start off the confirmation hearing for the College Invest Board. Angela Byer if you come forward. and you're confirming is David Hughes. I think you know the drill if you want to begin.

Mr. Hughes, would you like to say a few words?

Great, thank you very much Do we have any questions for Mr. Hughes? Senator Marchman

Yes, it started to slip away a little bit, Senator

Any other questions or comments? Senator Marchman, go ahead

That's a proper motion. Ms. Chris Phelan, please take the poll. Senators Bright.

Frizzell.

Kip.

Rich.

Snyder.

Marchman.

Mr. Chair.

And that passes unanimously.

Any opposition to the consent calendar Seeing none you will go to the consent calendar so sail through seconds Thank you very much for being here Next I hear a confirmation hearing for Colorado State University Board of Governors I have Dr. Tony Frank. And I think all your confirmings are here? Great. Two in person. Oh, there we go. And I think, again, you know the drill. Nice to see you again. Just go ahead, introduce yourself, and tell us who we're confirming, hopefully confirming today, right?

and without reservation. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much. We'll start with Ms. Markey. if you want to make sure you push the button there next to the white sign on the table.

Just introduce yourself. Tell us what you'd like to continue serving.

Thank you, and we'll just hold to see if there's any questions. We'll talk to Mr. Martin first.

Thank you very much, and thank you both for coming. Do we have questions? Senator Kipp.

Ms. Markey.

Sarah Kip? So, I mean, you know, there's been a lot of, I guess I didn't hear you say residents there in that list of people that you're trying to work with. And those are the people I hear from. Right. They are my constituents. I don't, I think most of my constituents don't even know how to reach out to CSU. and frankly they've been treated either with no response or rudely or dismissively when they reach out with concerns about noise or the big signs that have gone up in the community. And I'm just, how would they have their voices heard by you or do you think it's just not in the role of the board to care about those things? So I'm just really trying to understand what the role of board governance and oversight is in that space. Who would?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Senator, to the question of process, there should be several ways where people can contact CSU and they'll all get to the right people and to the board. We know we're a complex organization, but that shouldn't matter to the constituent. The constituents should be able to reach out either through the President's office at CSU Fort Collins or the Chancellor's office here in Denver. People can contact the board directly. There's a public comment period that the board hosts at each of its meetings, but we also make sure that all correspondence to the board is entered into that record. In addition, at least it used to be the case, and I believe it still is, that CSU and Fort Collins has a liaison position established with the city. And I know that President Parsons meets regularly with the city council and with the mayor to hear those concerns. So hopefully through any of those pathways, those things get to the board. And I will say that the board advises myself and the system staff and each of the three presidents about the importance of being good neighbors and working with our fellow citizens.

Dr. Frank?

Senator Kip? Well, I would be interested in hearing from the board members, since this is their reconfirmation, to find out, like, what role do you feel you have had in these conflicts, and what role do you see that you have as board members going forward?

Sure. Thank you, Senators. I would like to say that the board does take community relations seriously, the entire board. I believe that CSU and Fort Collins are in a symbiotic relationship for over 150 years, and we've tried to work together, strived to work together. I personally have not heard any complaints from anyone. I'm not saying they're not out there, but we do, if they come to the board, they are addressed and discussed and try to work together to create a positive outcome.

Being a resident, I have also heard concerns as well, and so I talk to people about that many times in the past, and I have talked through what we have tried to do. I do think, though, now that you've mentioned this, I think it is presumed for us to make sure that we talk to leadership again, to make sure that we understand, too, what those channels are for the community and make it very clear, whether it's on our website or whoever is answering the phone, that we are responsive to the public as a state institution. And so we will go back with that. We also have board meetings every other month, and we always have a public comment period, and we often have people from the community come and talk about, you know, opposing or supporting something that the university has done, and so that is something that's built into our board structure as well, that period for public comment.

Go ahead, Senator Kidd.

Anybody care to comment? Ms. Markey?

And do you feel your board has a role in that oversight in that case? I mean, if there are actual free speech concerns and they don't feel like they're being addressed by the university, would they be able to, do you think that the board has a role in that?

Dr. Frank.

Thank you. Does anybody else have questions? And just one more.

So the last thing I wanted to ask you all about is the recent chancellor search, right? I know there been a lot of folks who feel like the search was overly limited that it was like five weeks and a lot of that was over the winter break that a variety of people the American Association of University Professors, the Multicultural Staff, and Faculty Council, and others, all the, what, Faculty Council, anyway, they all formally objected to how the process was done, and you all have oversight as a board over choosing the replacement to be chancellor, which I think we all feel is really important. CSU is a broad thing. So why did you guys, I mean, even when I was on my local school board, we did a national search to find our next superintendent. Why did you all choose to say it was okay to do such an abbreviated and narrow search and then approve a new chancellor based on that? Not to say I think Ricoh Men's a great guy. I'm not saying that I don't think he's a great guy, but I'm just asking why the search. You guys were okay with the search being that abbreviated, particularly when so many people objected to that format.

Yes, thank you, Senator. First off, I don't think our search was abbreviated. We have been discussing options and opportunities for over the last year. as we discussed the different things that are going on, national search versus local search, there was one person that rose to the top amongst all those things, and it was Rico Munn. He's not only very qualified with his work, education, Aurora, and a number of other things, he's also very familiar, has served on the board, has very familiar with the CSU processes, and we felt like it was the best option for the university and for the system at this time. With chaos and challenges throughout the country and education and finance and budgeting, we felt like our choice was the best one available for us.

Senator Marchman.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you all for your service. My question is a simple one. With the Rams moving to a new football conference, how are we going to reestablish the Air Force Rams rivalry? We don't win that many games. I know you didn't either, but it's important to us to have a few winnable games on the schedule. I don't know if you have an answer for that, Dr. Frank.

For the last seven years, my answer to that question has been that the CSU system has no athletic teams. The campuses have our athletic programs, but I'm sure that if President Parsons was here, she would tell you that she values those rivalries as well, And I think all of us who have been around CSU wish that we had performed better over those years against the Falcons. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move to the full Senate with a favorable recommendation, the reappointments of Betsy Markey, Lewis Martin, and Kenzo Kawanabe to the Colorado State University Board of Governors. That's a proper motion. Ms. Kirsch-Famil, you take the roll. Senators Bright.

Aye.

Do you ready for the consent calendar? Do you have an objection? We do have an objection to the consent. So we'll head you down to our second reading. Thank you very much. I appreciate you being here and taking the time to answer the questions. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next we'll bring Senate Bill 68 from myself and Senator Byron Pelton, Modified Administration and Education Assessments. And it will take a couple minutes here and now Vice Chair Marchman will take over.

So today we bring you Senate Bill 68. Kind of the impetus of this bill was the good Senator Colker went to my district and met with 12 of my superintendents, and something that we heard over and over and over was exactly what we're bringing here today, and there will be a strike below. I have one of the, it says a capital briefing sheet from one of my school districts. It's from Buffalo School District RE4J in Moreno, Colorado, and it talks about the three key points for legislators. Colorado students in grades 3 through 8 can spend up to 11 hours. Each year taking statewide assessments, Colorado spends tens of millions of dollars annually on statewide testing while facing an estimated $1 billion deficit. State testing results often arrive months later, limiting their value for improving instruction. the solution to this would be that senate bill 2668 creates a working group to evaluate and reduce testing time while maintaining compliance with the ever student succeeds act or essa students regain it regain instructional time schools receive more meaningful data and colorado maintains accountability while using resources more responsibility Back in 2015, Colorado Law has allowed parents to opt their children out of statewide assessments. Schools should not face accountability penalties when families exercise a legal right established by the legislature. Why rural schools support this bill? In small rural districts, a handful of test scores can significantly affect school ratings. A more balanced approach to assessment ensures accountability, remains fair while protecting classroom learning time. A perfect example is that Buffalo School District RE4J, Buffalo School District uses NWEA map growth assessment to provide nationally norm data and intermediate instructional feedback multiple times during the year. The district also participates in the Student-Centered Accountability Program, SCAP, which evaluates school success through multiple measures, including student engagement, instructional quality in school, culture, and community involvement. Accountability matters, but it should help students learn, not simply measure them months after the fact. SB 2668 is a practical step toward restoring instructional time while maintaining meaningful accountability. So when Senator Colker came out, we met with 12 of my superintendents out there in my district, and these are schools that range all the way from Lone Star, which was a very, very small school, as well as Prairie, to Fort Morgan, which was one of the largest rural schools in the state. so I appreciate him coming out but that's that's how this bill's first started to come in in

Thank you thank you Madam Chair and members of the committee. Today it is my honor to help with Senator Pelton here to introduce this bill and it is one of those bills that was more of, let's say, grassroots. It was through those visits and talking to superintendents in my district. I represent Cherry Creek, Littleton, and Jeffco, and teachers, teachers, and plenty of teachers all over, who first question typically is, can we lower the number of hours we take CMAS? Now, as you know, many of you know that we're required to take a uniform test statewide for accountability and to measure our schools. Part of that comes from ESSA, the Every Student Succeeds Act. And CMASS has been our solution for that uniform assessment. But the problem, as we've heard from numerous people amongst the communities, is how long each child is sitting or has to take these tests. Eighth graders sit for 11 hours to take these tests. Schools are incentivizing kids with treats, with a bag of potato chips when they come in to take their first test, to get them to stay at their seat to look through the test as long as possible to incentivize them. So maybe if they're looking at the screen, because they're usually done on screens, that they'll consider taking their time and answer these questions. In high school, our tests that are available for this accountability are the PSAT and SAT. The PSAT in 9th and 10th grade is just a little over two hours. The SAT is just over three hours. And these are given the same weight for accountability as these tests for eighth graders and fifth graders. And third fourth and sixth take up to over seven hours of tests So how is it that from eighth grade one year next year they go to high school and they're taking 11 hours down to a little over two, and they're getting the same accountability. So all we're going to do with the strike below, and I'm going to describe some of it here, and then we'll move it so that we have it, is to create a working group to study. Is it possible to lower the seat time? Still keeping CMAS, still keeping the accountability, but is it possible to lower the seat time? And the people in this working group are professionals currently in school districts. We're having members who are teachers or part of a school district administrators, either rural or in the metro area, school board members, charter school teachers, individuals employed by or an employee of a school district appointed with the advice of you know of different groups within this state. That's what we're looking for. People who are working with the students on a day to day basis. Not those currently tied to the vendor. Millions of dollars have been spent you know. I actually, in 2022, spoke on assessments at the well, and I came across it this weekend on YouTube. And I spoke about assessments, so I'm just going to take some of my notes from 2022. Here we are four years later still talking about this. From 2015 to 2021, lobbyists spent $12 million to advocate for these programs. programs. We spend, as Senator Pelton said, millions of dollars each year, up to 18 million currently from the state on these assessments for CMAS. School districts spend millions of dollars a year on testing when it comes to the time taken by their staff, their administrators to set them up to prepare and away from instruction. We do have alternative assessments. We have interim assessments that don't take nearly as much time that we do three times a year. I'm asking at this point, let's take a look at what we're doing without the influence of outside lobby, without the influence of the vendors, just the people who are spending the time with these students every day. That's what this bill is going to do. A working group. Come back by the end of the year, report to us here and to the House Ed Committee, and report to the Department of Ed what they've found. With the Accountability Task Force, they've been assigned this. They were tasked with this last year, but they don't have all the same people that we're going to have. So my point here is I've heard from the rural districts, from Senator Pelton's districts. I've heard from the locals in my district. Let's get to the bottom of this with the people, again, who are there every day. If we have two reports, we have two reports. So be it. I wrote this amendment to mirror 2021 bill that set up an educator pay fund. And with the educator pay fund, they had to do a working group. And in that working group, there was no fiscal note because of the way it was written. I copied the language in this amendment to do the same thing so that the Department of Ed would have a fiscal note I know this is still going to go to appropriations and we work it out there, but that's what we're trying to do. Do this at zero cost and get the people who are there to review this policy and see if we can free up this time, free up the instructional time for our kids and our students and still be accountable. So that's my introduction to this bill. I'm open for questions, and then I can go to the amendment.

Senator Rich. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm glad you brought up the idea that, you know, there might be two studies, because a couple of years ago when a task force came out, they have a study that's going to be due in November. And it seems like why are we not waiting for that instead of doing this? And I know Senator Colker mentioned that, you know, if we have two studies, we have two studies. But I just am trying to figure out why that's necessary. my school district actually doesn't support this bill and doesn't see a need for this bill. So could someone explain why we're doing this when the other report is due in November?

Do you have a question? Yeah.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As a follow-up to Senator Rich's question, my understanding was that the task force created in the 23 bill, they completed their work and submitted that report. What we're waiting for now is how the state board is going to respond to the recommendations of that. That's what's due in November.

Last year, actually.

Thank you, Senator Marchman. Last year, actually, in 2025, we passed to ask them to look at the seat time, which they have not reported yet. So that's the difference. They have not reported the seat time. That's the whole intent of this bill. It's just the seat time. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to ask the two senators that just asked questions to also ask the superintendents that are in favor of the bill, because they can answer some of that as well, because I know that they've been in some of those discussions.

Is that correct? That's correct.

I'll wait until you're back on the

I did move it

thank you Madam Chair in the last section 3 of the amendment there was a request from some schools who are trying to reduce screen time with their students. In section three, it's to allow those schools to have a written test instead of a computer-based test as long as they pay for it themselves. And that was added in there. I should have brought that up originally.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just one question. And I know I've heard mentioned to superintendents, and in this situation, which is probably a rarity, we might see a different opinion from school boards than we do from superintendents. Did we get a chance to engage school boards on this?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I've talked to some school board members. I will be honest with you. There's been several school board members that said that they don't even look at the CMAS testing because it comes out so late. And they have actually said that to me several times on different school boards that I have. In fact, there was three school board members, four school board members that met with us with the superintendents that actually talked about that aspect of it. So and then there's one other thing, Madam Chair. Representative Garcia-Sander asked for her to have her name taken off. so that's going to happen if we make it to the next level. But I just want to make sure to let you guys know that.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Dan Schaller. I'm President of the Colorado League of Charter Schools. As a former member of the Accountability Task Force created by House Bill 1241 in 2023, I'm here today speaking in opposition to Senate Bill 68, out of recognition of the time, conversations, and collective commitments that that task force made. It's not every day that a broad, bipartisanly selected group of individuals comes together representing very disparate public education interests, spends over a year working working together and comes up with 30 recommendations for how our state's accountability and assessment system can be updated and improved. And yet that's exactly what 1241 did. Comprised of 26 members representing parents and students, educators, district and state leaders, and advocates from across Colorado's many kinds of schools and districts, the task force engaged in over 150 hours of meetings, including 16 full task force meetings, 27 additional small group meetings between members studying elements of the accountability system, and additional stakeholder consultations. The accountability task force did important work, and the results of that work are just now making their way through the system. We ought to allow those results to fully materialize. As a result of 1241 and then last year's enacting legislation, House Bill 1268, which included a specific call-out for examining ways to shorten assessments, meaningful efforts are already underway to improve and streamline our system where we can and importantly these changes and updates were arrived at in a thoughtful and collaborative way that preserves the school-by-school comparability and transparency that are key components of our state's current overall accountability system. For all these reasons I respectfully request a no

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the committee. I appreciate being here today. I'm Charlotte Brantley, representing myself, and I am here in opposition to this bill. By way of background, I'm a member of the board of Rocky Mountain Prep Charter School Network, a network of 12 pre-K through 12 schools. I also chair their Schools and Academics Committee. I'm also a member of the board of the Colorado Children's Campaign and was President and CEO of Clayton Early Learning for 13 years. I have also have an extensive background in state and federal administration of early childhood education and care programs. We're here today to talk about student assessments and the effort and money involved in administering those assessments. This will sound obvious, but the point of assessments is to find out how much our students have learned. After all, the whole reason our system of public education from pre-K to grade 12 exists is to prepare kids for a successful adulthood. Assessments are a critically important part of that system. We already know that many, many of our students are not achieving proficiency benchmarks. We know this because our current system of assessments gives us the data to know this. In a well-intentioned effort to lessen the time and financial burdens of assessments on teachers and districts, I believe this bill is focused on the wrong end of the telescope. Watering down the assessment system to either minimize or even eliminate some aspects to save money and time is not going to magically result in higher quality and more effective instruction. Are our students from pre-K to grade 12 not doing well because of the amount of time spent taking tests? Or is it because our systems of instruction are not yet fulfilling the promise we made to our students when they enter our public schools? I do agree that assessment systems should periodically be examined to ensure they are still capturing what classroom teachers, districts, and the state need to know about the results of our instructional practices. A redesigned and improved assessment system should be focused on the support it will give to those instructing our students so that instruction is also improved and our student growth and achievement increases. To focus only on saving time and money by deciding what can be eliminated is a dangerous path unlikely to result in greater student performances. I urge you to oppose this bill as written and bring greater focus on how to ensure teachers and districts receive the support needed to deepen instructional practices without eliminating the ways we can track the effectiveness of those practices both locally and statewide I happy to answer any questions Thank you

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee. My name is Brenda DeConner, and I'm the president of Ready Colorado, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving education across the state. And I'm here to respectfully urge a no vote on Senate Bill 68. I appreciate the sponsors having conversations with me about this bill over the last couple of months. I do remain opposed even with the strike below. I disagree with both the rhetoric and the tone of the strike below, and I feel that it's unnecessary to have this bill when there is already a state commission study underway examining how to shorten tests. And the reason I find the rhetoric and the tone problematic is that I do think statewide assessments are a critical component of our accountability system that allows for a true apples to apples comparison across schools and districts of how our students are performing. Our parents rely on this data to make informed school choices for their children, and as a parent myself, I received my third-grader CMASS data last June. I found that very timely and helpful. I also know that my school leader uses the data as well to showcase the quality and the results of our school to our neighborhood and the surrounding community. And we also know that the state uses this statewide data to identify struggling schools and target support so that we are making the best use of our state resources to close achievement gaps and accelerate learning for all children. What's great about our state assessments as well is that Colorado has worked really hard to have standards and tests that are aligned to one another. So if teachers are teaching the standards and going about their day-to-day instruction, students will do well on the tests because they are aligned to those standards. That's also why they take a little bit longer than a PSAT or SAT, but they provide us with high-quality information about how those students are doing in a comparable manner across the state. And again, there's already a study underway to figure out if we can shorten the tests a little bit, but I do find that the time frame for the test as given is reasonable, given the data that we get from those tests. This is also an extremely large investment for our state. It's a $10 billion investment in our K-12 education. So not only parents and district leaders and school leaders need this data, but our taxpayers to see how our students are faring across the state. This is a reasonable expectation to assess learning once a year to see how students are doing, and I don't find it to be an undue burden as the strike below suggests. I have also had several conversations with Senator Pelton about the unique issues that rural school districts face, especially around volatility for small schools and systems, And I do believe there's actions we can take to fix and resolve and improve that situation. However, this bill does not do that. It doesn't have an attempt to do that. And so I think those are conversations we could have at another time to address those issues, but it's not through this bill. And I don't, again, do not find a reason for us to have this bill today, so I respectfully urge a no vote.

Hi. Good afternoon, Senate Education Committee members. My name is Shannon Nicholas. I'm Senior Vice President at Colorado Succeeds. I'm here on behalf of our Board of Directors asking for a no vote today on Senate Bill 68. Colorado Succeeds has advocated for strong, student-centered policies for 20 years. We believe deeply in Colorado's homegrown talent and the systems that support it. But I also come to you today as Harry and Max's mom. My two sons attend a small BOCES-run school through a cooperative agreement between Denver, Aurora, and Cherry Creek. Small schools don't always have the visibility that larger districts do Statewide assessments change that The comparability matters for my family and it matters for the school That data is part of how resources and supports get directed to schools like theirs. When you take away the assessment, or you minimize the assessment, you take away a signal that something might need to change. My concern with this bill isn't just what it removes. It's what it's redirecting our attention toward. We should be talking about how to respond to what the assessments are already telling us, not whether to keep asking the question of do we need them. Fifteen years ago, I worked at the U.S. Department of Education managing state accountability waivers before Every Student Succeeds Act was reauthorized. I watched states spend years in conversations about how to structure accountability. Process consumed what should have been energy toward the results. Given the current federal environment, Colorado focusing on its students and its current outcomes feels more important than ever. Colorado has already done the hard work of bringing the right people together. Let's honor that and not redo it with a smaller circle. I do not believe Colorado needs another group debating whether 8 hours or 11 hours is the right amount to measure student learning. Instead, I'm inspired by other states that have doubled down on strong instructional practices and are seeing real gains in literacy and math. Let's keep academic rigor and strong teaching at the center. We do not need a group. We need a group that is obsessed with doing what's next. The data tells us where the gaps are, and the question is whether we're willing to act on it. I appreciate your time, and I would ask for a respectful vote of no.

Senator Bright. Thank you, Madam Chair. I had a number of questions, and this is a great panel to ask a few of them, too. Questions for Ms. Nicholas. I've noted that states that succeed in producing high-performing students, high-performing leaders, prioritize assessments. Have you seen that cooperated from state to state?

Ms. Nicholas.

where to put those resources and how to help those students. Senator Bright? Thank you again Madam

assessment testing and you chose the school that you enrolled in based on the performance of the school. Can you talk a little bit about if there are other measures or tools or things like that that would have led you to the same conclusion or is this primarily what you relied on? Ms. DeConner. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Senator Bright. No, it's a great question and we,

trend-wide that's a new word trend data thank you senator bright and thank you madam chair just one follow up to that. This might be more hypothetical, but we might be able to see this in real time. If the state backed off on testing, and we have noted that states that prioritize testing achieve better results, would we start to see schools that could afford to do testing, even if they weren't reimbursed by the state to do so, possibly widen the gap between higher-achieving schools and lower-achieving schools? Who wants to hit that hypothetical?

Ms. DeConner.

You got another?

Thank you. Senator Colker.

Yeah, sure. Thank you for the question, Senator. We've been looking at a number of southern states, Louisiana and Mississippi in particular, who've not only looked at state data, but then again put resources toward additional programming and supports for early literacy and math interventions and tutoring.

Any other comments? Seeing none, we're going to excuse this panel. Thank you for your testimony. Let's pull up another joint panel of in-person and remote. We have Maddie Ashour, Nicholas Hernandez, Vernon Jones, and Kate Berger. I think Kate may be remote. Yes. Kate's not coming. Okay, great. If that's the case, I would like to pull up Ms. Jessica Escalante. Okay, sorry about that. Why don't we start here with you, Ms. Ashour.

Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you. Next up.

thank you for your time thank you and we wrap up here on the end hello hello madam chair uh members of the education committee great to see all of you today I Vernon Jones CEO of Faith Bridge proud dad of a seventh grader and a former educator and school leader who had to deal with assessments. And I was at one time a site, a sal, so I had to deal with all the testing, so I understand the struggles that we deal with there. I want to say that the work to improve, as you've heard from many of the folks have already spoken to approve assessment has been in progress it's something that we should continue it's not something that we should undermine but we should continue to improve the process why it's very important that parents and students and educators understand how children are doing because we all know there is still a practice of social promotion where kids are being promoted on and nobody knows that as we give them diplomas and these kids don't have the skill sets to be able to read they don't have the skill sets to be able to navigate some of the places that we send them to, giving them the false hope that they are ready. So we've got to assess, and I think to what Ms. Escalante said, we have to assess what we want. When we teach families about who calls the shots when it comes to quality schools in our state, we tell them, here's the state legislature's role, here's the state board of education role, here's your school board's role, and here's your role as a family. Everybody has a responsibility to ensure quality outcomes at our schools. has a responsibility to ensure that kids across Colorado are reading at grade level, that they have math proficiency at grade level. That's all of our responsibilities. But we can't know if we're hitting it out of the park if we are pushing away from assessments. We've heard over and over again from many educators that I've worked with, I said this when I was working in schools, loved the fact that we were taking assessments, but they need to be timely. There's no way that as an educator, it is a beneficial tool for me if I'm not getting that information back in time for me to go back and sit and coach and support the student with the outcomes that come from those data reports. So there does definitely need to be continued improvement in our assessment system, but that doesn't mean eliminating them. It actually means improving them so that we can actually coach students to be where they need to be on the levels of proficiency that they need to be at. It is a justice issue for us. It is a justice issue for us that we make sure that assessments are continuing to be taken at a high level that they help to expose to us not how students are doing, but how the system is doing for students. That's the real measure. It's telling us if we are meeting the students at their point of need, if we're helping the students to be able to achieve the outcomes that we want for all students in Colorado. And so I urge a no vote on Senate Bill 068 today because we've got to continue to do the improvement that we have been doing as a state to ensure justice for all children across Colorado. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Ms. Usher. How are you? Good to see you. Just going to ask you a question based on your comment and comments from the panel that I've heard is that we should always be checking to improve learning, always check our growth, check to see how they're doing. One thing about this bill is it's not eliminating assessments, it's reducing that time and allowing time for other assessments. Are we able to always check with CMASS in its current iteration in a timely manner right now on its students'

Senator Colker. So what you just said is they get it in the fall, and it makes each school district comparable, but it doesn't necessarily help each individual student at that moment in time that they receive that. Because what you're really talking about is comparing school districts, not teachers helping the students in that moment of time. Because we're talking about a student who was tested the previous school year has a different teacher. So I'm not talking about eliminating assessments. I'm talking about how do we best use the time we have to make this timely to immediately improve that student's growth. And so what you told me there wasn't improving that immediate time. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

And I will probably wait to say a lot of stuff. but I will just say 11 hours. Do you guys know how old a third grader is? They're like little. It's a long time for them to be sitting. So I just hope you understand too that what is happening in this room and in this building and I think the sponsor did a good job of describing it is very different from what we hear in the schools from parents, from students, from teachers. So if we're going to talk about student-centered, I would say what third grader is asking for 11 hours of testing? I can't even get third graders to watch Frozen, but to watch it three times without speaking? Unbelievable.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I was a little confused by your comment. They don't get tested 11 hours straight, do they? I thought they were broken up into three separate. And there's only two of the categories where it actually hits 11 hours. Senator Snyder, that is not actually the way things work. So they are broken up by different tests by day. But the way this works in our schools is kids have testing for like one to two weeks. And it's incredibly everything stops. No instruction. There's no, nothing happens for two full weeks. So, yeah, they are broken up, but it's like, try to watch Frozen with a kid. Like, this is Frozen, but unfortunately there's no cool Olaf. There's nothing entertaining about it, and they're just stuck on a screen without being able to speak. Senator Snyder.

I just wanted to ask Mr Shore if I new to the committee I realize that so I probably have a steep learning curve But does the Chair Marchman comments resonate with you I mean is it a big burden especially for younger kids

Yes. Senator Snyder.

Mr. Hernandez, and then we'll go to Mr. Jones.

run K-8 schools and 9-12 schools, we never would sit a third grader down for 11 hours straight. So I hope that that's clear, that we're not talking about 11 hours straight. I mean, you look at the data, the third through eighth grade is about 90 to 110 minutes per unit that they are preparing for that test by itself. The math standard is about 65 minutes that they're prepared for that's a two units so that's not a we're not close to 11 hours yet and then the science for fifth grade eighth grade and 11th grade is 50 to 80 minutes that those those tests are actually in the seat during the time I think what I want to be clear about the disparities that I concerned about is the test readiness like to your point like how many kids are coming into a third through eighth grade English language arts test on grade level? Are they ready to perform at that test level to achieve proficiency? There are factors outside of the classroom, there are factors that you are pointing to that impact a student's ability to be successful on that test. And that's what the data tells me is like what is the entire system doing to prepare those third through eighth graders who have to sit for a 90 to 110 minute test to prove their proficiency and not really their proficiency, but is the system being proficient to Mr. Hernandez's point to meet them at their point of need so that we can achieve a high Colorado standard where all of our children are being educated the same way in my community as they are in your community so that they can be ready for the greatness that we expect.

Mr. Hernandez.

Senator Colker. Thank you. I just want to reiterate to Senator Bright that this is not reducing testing. It's not making it voluntary. Currently, CMS is voluntary. There is an opt-out provision. And so the point here is by reducing the lengths of the different days, we get more kids to test. It would be incentivizing more testing. We're incentivizing more scores would be the point here. It's not about voluntary schools opting out. No, not at all. Still keeping CMS all together. so I just want to make sure that that's

Mr Jones I didn mean to not call on you for the last question No thank you Senator Bright I appreciate your question to Nicholas there I think the thing that we have to be concerned about as I sit in this room with you guys

their academic proficiencies are just as important to us as them being prepared to work on the front lines of the jobs that we want them to go to. Ms. Asher. Thank you, Senator Marchman, and thank you, Senator Kolker, for the question. I would again refer this committee to the presentation that CDE gave to the House Education Committee about the tradeoffs between reducing testing any more than we already have and the loss of the quality of the data that can come from additionally minimized testing. There are just some really careful, conscious choices that we need to make. And I think that's why my fellow panelists are honing in on the need for assessments overall and the need for that quality statewide comparable systemic data. And because by continuing to minimize assessments further than we already have done and further than the 1241 task force suggests that we do, There are some pretty serious data quality questions that CDE rose in that particular hearing.

My name is Tim Nelson. I have worked as a middle school English teacher for the past 16 years. I'm testifying today in opposition to Senate Bill 68. While CMAS and other state assessments can certainly be improved, Uh, remain incredibly valuable tools for educators. As a classroom teacher, I rely on CMASS data every year to guide both group and individualized instruction. Each year, I use those results to assess the effectiveness of my teaching the previous year. For example, last year's data indicated that my students demonstrated a gap in their reading of informational and text, particularly in science and technical subjects. In response, my science and social studies colleagues and I adjusted our instruction and increase the frequency of these types of texts in our classrooms. Likewise, I used state testing data results to respond to incoming students. Before I even met my current class of eighth graders, I knew the vocabulary development and essay writing would need to be major areas of focus for us. Using that information, I redesigned lessons and planned new units of study to create more opportunities for practice in both areas and implemented small group instruction for students need additional support. Some might dismiss this as simply teaching to the test but I and other educators know that data collection is fundamental to effective instruction. Classroom evaluation tools are critical parts of data-driven instruction and facilitate that. Similarly rigorous normed assessments administered by the state serve as another valuable source of data that teachers like myself can use to respond to student learning. I am concerned that further reducing assessment time could compromise the reliability of student performance data and limit the responses available to teachers, districts, and the state. Assessment results may not always demonstrate the outcomes we hope for, but it's precisely by shining a light on these gaps that we can more equitably serve students across the state. Just as teachers must understand where their students are struggling in order to tailor instructions, district and the state must know what students are struggling and where they are falling behind. Without reliable student and school-specific data addressing those challenges becomes far more difficult and could worsen existing inequities between school and student groups. At present, the 11 hours my students will spend on CMS testing in April accounts for less than 1% of their learning time across the entire year. From my perspective as an educator, the call for state assessment reform should be about better testing, not less testing. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Madam Chair and members of the committee, good afternoon. My name is Ryan Marks, and I'm here representing myself. I'm a former public school teacher and the parent of a public school student, and I had the privilege of serving on the accountability task force created by House Bill 23-1241. The task force spent more than a year studying Colorado's accountability and assessment system, hearing from educators, researchers, school leaders, and families across the state. Our work resulted in 30 consensus recommendations to strengthen Colorado's accountability system. Those recommendations directly informed House Bill 25-1278, which the legislature passed last year to modernize Colorado's education accountability system. House Bill 25-1278 updated how Colorado measures school performance, added new indicators for college and career readiness and reaffirmed the importance of having consistent statewide assessment data for families educators and policymakers where they can compare student outcomes across schools Senate Bill 2668 moves in the opposite direction First, Colorado has built a nationally recognized accountability system around student growth. Growth matters because it is less tied to student background characteristics than absolute achievement and helps us understand the impact schools have on student learning regardless of where students start. That model depends on consistent statewide assessment data over time. Colorado is one of the few states that currently measures meaningful growth at the high school level. Reducing statewide assessments to the federal minimum would remove that longitudinal data necessary to calculate growth and effectively eliminate Colorado's current high school growth measure. If growth becomes harder to measure, accountability could shift towards achievement-only measures, which tend to correlate more strongly with student demographics and with school impact. Second, the state is already doing the work this bill calls for. House Bill 25-1278 already directed CDE to study ways to shorten assessments, reduce testing time, and decrease turnaround time. That work is currently underway, moving forward with additional legislation now risks duplicating or disrupting that effort before findings are complete. These assessments provide the only consistent standards. Excuse me. The task force also discussed the role of local assessments. while valuable for instruction, they are not designed to measure student performance against the standards consistently across schools statewide. That comparability is exactly what statewide assessments provide. As a former public school teacher, the parent of a public school student, and the son of a career educator, I view this issue from several perspectives. From each of these perspectives, I believe Colorado needs standards-based statewide assessments that we know how students are performing against our shared academic expectations. For these reasons, and based on my experience serving on the task force, I respectfully urge the committee to vote no on Senate Bill 2668. Thank you for your time, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

As we're pulling up Mr. Burmeister, we will go ahead and start with Dr. Beranzo. Good afternoon. I'm not a rural superintendent, but I would love to be with those cool guys. I'm Dr. Burhansel, Superintendent of Harrison School District 2 in Colorado Springs, one of the most diverse school districts in the state. I'm also case president-elect, part of the Colorado Association of School Executives. I was also honored to chair the State Accountability Task Force, so it's very interesting to hear all the comments from our opposition about what we talked about Thank you for the opportunity to testify today in support full support of Senate Bill 26068 With the utmost respect I like to point out that many of the majority of the opposition have never led a school system or implemented these state assessment requirements. In our schools, we believe assessments should support learning and help students respond to student needs. When used well, testing can help drive instruction. Teachers rely on meaningful data to understand where students are succeeding and where additional support is needed so they can adjust instruction and provide timely intervention. However, we must also be mindful of balance. Currently, students spend approximately 8 to 11 hours on standardized testing alone, and that does not include the numerous hours spent on additional testing that occurs throughout the classrooms throughout the year. While some assessments are valuable for informing instruction, the cumulative amount of testing can take away from critical learning time for all students. In addition, every year we have students suffer mental health issues given this high stress testing. This impact is not only on students. In many districts, including mine, assistant principals serve as testing coordinators. This means they spend roughly 50 hours outside their typical day providing and getting ready for state testing, and in many ways are effectively completely out of commission for the month of April as they oversee the testing process. These are school leaders who would otherwise be in classrooms supporting instruction, coaching teachers, working directly with students, and helping families who need support. When they are pulled away to manage the logistics of testing for weeks at a time, it limits the ability of schools to provide hands-on leadership and support that makes a real difference for students. During the work on our accountability task force, which I had the honor of chairing, this issue came up frequently. Stakeholders from across the state discussed the importance of maintaining accountability while also ensuring the testing systems truly support student learning and do not unnecessarily take time away from instruction. I also appreciate this bill supports the use of a working group to examine best practices and determine how Colorado can best monitor and measure student learning moving forward. Bringing together educators, policymakers, and stakeholders to thoughtfully review our assessment system will help ensure we strike the right balance between accountability, transparency, and meaningful learning. At the end of the day, the bill is about finding the right balance, maintaining transparency and accountability while protecting instructional time and ensuring school leaders can focus on supporting students and teachers. Our goal should always be to ensure that assessments serve learning, not overshadow it. Our students deserve nothing but this. Thank you for your time and continued commitment to Colorado students. I urge you to support Senate Bill 26068. Thank you very much. Let's go to Mr. Bowers.

I am here in support of this bill. I come from a very unique perspective. I am the smallest school district who's going to speak to you today. We have 120 students, K-12. We are located 30 miles from any town. so all of our kids are bused in to Lone Star School District, which creates very, very unique school choice options for our kids. And why my situation is different, you know, I taught at Lone Star for nine years, so I've seen the teacher perspective all the way from TCAP to CMASS to whatever they were calling it when I first started teaching. And then I moved into a principal role where I was the principal, the counselor. And then I moved into a principal superintendent slash counselor slash district assessment coordinator role So thank you Dr Windy for bringing that up So I get to see I speaking from the kids perspective and I really appreciate Senator Cochran Senator Pelton bringing this to light that in different districts, this looks different for every single person. I get to see the kids. I get to see the stress that it puts on them every single day. I get to see that the teachers during that test time who are coming into my office crying because now this is attached to their RANDA evaluation. When I have five kids in a class and two or three of those kids can basically ruin, for lack of better words, what their RANDA evaluation is going to look like. We do enough testing. We do three years of NWA testing. We have the data that we need for our kids. We do Dibbles testing beginning of year, middle of year, end of year. We do COGAT testing. We do ASVAB testing. They put a graduation guidelines template together of ways that we can see that kids are college workforce career ready. It's not all about one test at the end of the school year. That does take up 11 hours of time, and that's just the seat time. It's not in a row. Yes, we figured that out, but it is that amount of time and it is burdensome on kids and kids do get test anxiety and they don't want to do it. My school district is a very, very high opt-out school district for these reasons alone. My board, when I asked if they want to see our CMAS scores, they do not want to see them. They want to know where our kids are at on their NWA scores, where we can test them three times a year, everybody. We can also go back and retest them if we would like for a very minimal amount of money to see where they're at. I am strongly in favor of this bill, and I thank the senators for putting this together to at least begin the conversation. Thank you. Oh, thank you. I have to call the next person. I can't see.

Hi, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. At the beginning of my teaching career, a little over 30 years ago, the original CSAP disrupted learning for two weeks or more each year. We were told then that the time was necessary to determine whether students successfully absorbed all of the grade level criteria. My view was then that maybe government was overstepping in that area and that should remain a local control issue. In the last 30 years of government control of testing, not much has changed with the amount of time and money we waste on state assessments. But the rationale and the test has changed drastically. We no longer assess grade level criteria. We need to hear that again because we've been hearing many people talk about data, data, data. We do not assess grade level criteria. We assess a norm. An average student will incorrectly answer half of the questions. It is not in any way similar to any test any person over the age of 45 would have taken in school. Normed assessments have successfully created a cult of average that has forced public schools to reduce instruction to the common denominator or the average. We no longer see criterion-based knowledge. We seek average or slightly better. It has also drastically increased student anxiety and apathy as they now measure themselves against one another rather than learning all of the content. There is not one shred of evidence over the last 30 years that big government testing has worked, but yet we continue wasting students' time and taxpayers' parents are increasingly choosing to move their children away from government schools. Those that may stay believe that these tests bring accountability. They do not. There is not one positive to be derived from state testing that wasn't already happening in classrooms and homes previously. My parents always knew how much I was learning. They talked to my teacher. State politicians, though, had no idea. no idea. The system of local control that once worked well in education is now entirely broken, and the testing proves that to be true. State assessments do not provide any classroom-level data, especially not any data that changes from year to year. Everything is so effectively normed, curriculum, materials, classroom questions, and assessments, that ineffective teachers are being protected by bad assessments. Reducing the amount of time they take government tests is a small step in the right direction. I firmly support this bill.

Good afternoon. Jeremy Burmeister, superintendent, Platte Valley School District in Kersey, Colorado. We're about 10 miles east of Greeley. Also have a freshman son, so I'm here speaking to you today as both a superintendent of schools, a high school business teacher for three years, an assistant principal for seven, and at the district level now currently as superintendent for the past three years here at Platte Valley School District. First, I want to take a few minutes to say thank you to Senators Colker and Pelton for taking the time to go and actually meet with individuals at school districts, superintendents, board numbers to obtain feedback related to state assessment. I don't view this as a way to water down accountability. I view this as a way to have assessment be thoughtful, intentional, and purposeful. Some of the things I heard the individuals speak to us here before us today alluded to the need to find data that looks at that growth data. Well, when you don't have a state assessment that is tested on an annual basis, like our science test, which is fifth grade, eighth grade, and 11th grade only in the state of Colorado for CMASS, there's no growth data associated with it. When you take a test, when you're learning science in third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, I would be curious to see or hear from any state board member, state legislature, how much they recall from their science class that they learned three years beforehand. This is about being thoughtful and intentional about what tests we have. When you have 50% of the state opting out of the science CMAS because they don't find value in it, that should tell our elected officials, there's an issue with that assessment. I share that Where our school district has a 95 participation rate across the board on all state assessments We value those We want accountability but we want it to be thoughtful and intentional not just testing for testing sake Finally, in relation to nationally normed assessments, CMS does not necessarily provide an actionable opportunity for assessment for people to use. NWEA does. Those are assessments that educators use to help us guide and change our instruction for our students' needs. It is also data that is nationally normed across 7 million students across this country for people to be able to access and use for the various reasons that were alluded to earlier. Folks, I hope we can take Senate Bill 68 as a step forward to be thoughtful and intentional about our state testing as a way for us to continue that need for accountability. Thank you again for the time. Thank you, Senator Kolker and Pelton, for your work. I appreciate you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, sir. You too. Appreciate you.

Yeah, absolutely. So it would be twofold. the most frequently used is NWEA that I alluded to. That is a fall assessment, winter assessment, and spring assessment. That assessment allows us to have actionable changes for how we provide instructions. So let me give you an example. Coming out of the winter assessment, which we took in December at our elementary, our elementary principal and assistant principal notice some a group of students that were struggling at the third grade level based upon that information and that data that they took they were able to make changes in their schedules to provide them more guided specific individualized instruction and small group learning options that they did not have prior to receiving that that data from february or from from the fall to December. Because the timeframes that we have with CMASS, where that test is taken in the spring, and then school districts get high level data in August, and then further deeper down data towards the beginning of the school year, it does not provide that opportunity for intentional conversations and changes that take place. I'm not saying that there's not a place for CMASS assessment. I think there is a place for it. But how it is used currently and the frequency that it is used is misguided, I would say. Thank you. Senator Colker. Thank you. Thank you all for

it looks like you're having a tough time still i uh just wanted to say thank you three months out of surgery so i'm doing i'm doing better good good i was waiting for them to tell me i could talk because i saw the chat box excellent excellent you can talk i do i do have a point to make here you know that we not eliminating the CMS testing It good to hear Mr Birdmeister you say that You know there still that need to it

Okay. Okay. Dr. Wendy, we're going to pull you up first. Saw your hand come right up.

Senator Snyder. Thank you, Madam Chair. Quick question for Mr. Bowers.

You can go. I'm a rural follower, kind of. So I'm trying to learn this. Me too.

Wow.

Everybody opted out? Well, so they don't test K2.

And we do test all PSAT and SATs, so all third through eighth grade parents opt their students out of CMS testing.

Senator Snyder. Well that leads I think to the next question is why do we need this bill then if it not really impacting your population I think to best answer that question is it starts the conversation for other districts

Thank you.

She has her hand up.

Senator Snyder.

Dr. Berenzel.

Yes, thank you for noting, Mike Miles, the turnaround was all about accountability. It was not in-state accountability. It was internal accountability. So we have our own internal scorecards here in our district and many others do. We measure what's happening in the school, and it's not one test score. And I think that's one of the major concerns with the state test is it's one test score. So I have third graders that get one chance to show what they know or don't know instead of a growth model of what they know. And they can show that throughout the year. And that's part of the problem with the state test. The other thing is what we're really assessing. Is it aligned with what we should be assessing? Both those points were brought up in the accountability task force by every educator in the room. We didn't get to end it because we had so many other things to work on. But assessments is a major area for growth. It is a large task to undertake, which is why I definitely support having a task force look into it and next steps. I would also caution us from previous presenters sharing we should look at Louisiana and Mississippi. They rank behind us as a state for education. So we need to be very cautious and do the right research to really find out who's making a difference. And we also need to realize that a seven-year-old can't be measured by one test score.

One final question. Let's pick a neighboring school district, maybe D12, Cheyenne Mountain. Why would they have such an abysmal test rate? Say 25% of students actually take the test.

So I'm just trying to figure that out. I know D12 is one of the highest performing districts in the state, so I'm still trying to get my arms around why they would not encourage or how that happens.

Thank you. Their test rate is in the 80s or 90s, I believe. I was just using an example, Senator. But I will tell you that many of their gifted students and more advanced students do not take the test for multiple reasons. And that is a choice, like you had mentioned earlier in our conversation, that people can opt out. And we're seeing more of our advanced learners opt out or some of our small rural districts, the whole district, or a lot of the community opt out.

Senator Kipp. Thank you. I think maybe this would be a good panel to ask this question. So I know, you know, when my kids went to high school, there were certainly kids, and I was also in the local school board for a lot of years, so I've heard about other stories like this, where kids who see no value in the test just mess with the test, right? They randomly fill out answers. They fill out, you know, they'll write off-topic responses. They'll mess with it, which, I mean, yeah, nobody wants to mess with, you know, their teachers and how they end up getting evaluated because they end up getting evaluated sometimes on these test scores. But can you speak to how this might affect what's coming out of these test scores?

no i think you're you're exactly right and that does happen um a lot with with any assessment sometimes it's a coping mechanism for kids if they just don't know it they'll try to do use another tactic to either get out of the test or not have to do it anymore And I guess my biggest point that I would add to this is that why we have all advocated for NWA If you go too fast on NWA and just start clicking buttons, it automatically stops you. The proctor of the test then goes and has a conversation with the kiddo, and they can restart the test, and they can have them try. Now they're on our radar. We're going to watch. We're going to see. or we knew that they tested in the 58th percentile in the winter and they came back after the test was done and they scored in the third percentile, we can tell they didn't try. We can go back and have a conversation with that kid and that parent usually that says, look, we use these tests to guide instruction. We need this data. This is the data that's holding our school accountable, your kid accountable, everybody accountable. We're going to have your son retake this test and or daughter. And typically we're right on. They come in, they got a little lecture from their parents as it should be, and they come in and they do what they're supposed to do on the test and they try. And that's where we can see real student achievement rather than the one time

yes thank you am i okay talk yes okay um you know senator kipp i appreciate the question and that's certainly something that comes about um i might take a different approach though we work really hard to work with our students and our families and our staff about the only thing that we ask of you is to give your best. And obviously, sometimes that takes place and sometimes that's not going to take place. I think in my mind, though, that we're losing the sight of Senator Pelton's and Senator Colker's request with this. And it's to look at thoughtful, intentional testing, not to avoid accountability. Both things can be true. Both things can take place. And I would advocate for us having the opportunity to have a thoughtful, intentional conversation about assessment that's important and that matters, that's going to help us in our positions while maintaining accountability. Some of the assessments that are taken through CMASS do not do that. So we choose at least specifically here in our school district to focus in on the things that we can control. Things that we can control are our students effort, getting them to attend, working to take the assessment seriously. We've got by and large, like I said, a 95 to 97 percent participation rate. Those are the things that we can do the best of our ability to control. And so that's why I would personally argue for the support of this of Senate Bill 68, because it's a look at thoughtful, intentional assessment, not just assessment, because we say we don't want to water it down without knowing what we're talking about.

I just wanted to add, so there is actually research you can look at on the fudge rate for kids, if you want to call it that. It's very low. In fact, it's lower than the error rate for the test. So kids don typically at a high rate Christmas tree the test though that does happen It is usually especially now when the computerized systems it stopped But there is a degradation rate and that also researched So over the course of three, six, nine, you know, 11, 12 hours, if it's even, especially when it's spread out over days, there's a degradation rate. And we know that those last days tests, the kids do not perform as well as they did in the first day. So we, as managers, try to, well, let's put the math test first or let's put the other test first. And I think all of those things, if we have to manipulate those things, they're changing the data and that makes the data not as effective as it could have otherwise been. And to those who say, well, what data would we have? How would we know Harrison is a really good school. I went my freshman year to Sierra High School. I don't know that anyone would know how well I did in 1986 or care, but I do know that the assessments that have been used since 1970 that we can track since 1970 at the end of the K-12 career, that is SAT and ACT, Those test scores have not changed since 1970 for any student who is taking those assessments, including the ones that are now taking them statewide. So when I say to you, there is no evidence to support that they work or that they're really showing growth. NWEA, for example, you have to use that test for more than three years in a row to get past the error rate for one year. So that's why it's a good test because they're tracking that kid from year to year on that test. But it would not be a good annual assessment if you just did it one time because the error rate is greater. There are points like that that absolutely should drive us toward reduced testing at that level and bring that testing back to the classroom level.

Oh, wait. Sorry, I was just going to add to Senator Kipp's question. We have 20 schools. Our poorest performing school, because we do get reports of how much time they spent on the test, it won't be surprising that they spent half the amount of time that every other student in the district spent on the test. We spend a lot of time. And we bring in, you know, we're Olympic City, USA. So we bring in Olympians to kind of get them motivated to do your best on the test. We have great breakfast that day. We call, we remind everyone. But we can only do so much, right? And I mean, the kids perform and do what they do. But they're testing all the time because I had mentioned that we're doing daily tests. We're doing weekly tests. We're doing six-week cycles. And so our students really know that we hold them accountable. but at the end of the day, once that test starts, they're on their own to kind of show us what they know, and we can't intervene because that's test proctoring, and that's what it should be, but when you look at the students performing the least in our district specifically, they didn't do, they didn't take any time for the test, and so we don't get scores for that school that are going to say they're not performing, but I know they didn't even look at the questions, and so it's not even an accurate assessment of what they know or don't know.

I am just going to ask Mr Burr to respond to this really quickly You said something that was incredibly important You talked about the fact that we're not doing criteria-referenced, standards-based types of things. We're doing norm-reference testing. So norm-reference testing is where the average student gets roughly half the questions wrong. And that's what we keep hearing from people that, you know, oh, we need to know this. This is really important. So we know because if they've either met expectation or did not meet expectation, that means something. Can you please explain to me what it does mean on a norm reference test if a student meets expectation?

Oh, I appreciate that. You did a really, really good job. Now get back out there in North Carolina and have fun.

My name is Judy Solano. I am a retired teacher of 27 years. Tried to make it to 30, but my 27th year, No Child Left Behind, influenced my decision to retire early. I have a master's degree in reading and writing from CU Denver. And I am a grandmother of six. and I am now the chair of Advocates for Public Education Policy, which works to protect and support public education. And I had my testimony all written out, but I decided after listening to this that I would just speak from my heart. So here I go. So what changed that 27th year? The principal came in and said to our team, we're going to cut out one of the recesses, and we want you to cut back on science and social studies, and we're going to do 90-minute blocks of language arts and math. Not only did that break my heart, because we had a vibrant, vibrant community of teachers that worked together to bring all kinds of wonderful things happening to our school. We had very little turnover at our school. The kids got antsy after 30 minutes of dedicated language arts and math, let alone 90 minutes. So then anyway, the test came along. And just to give you some examples of what happened, I had a young boy that actually climbed under his desk because he was so overwhelmed with the pressure that was on him to take the test. I had another boy, and I was monitoring. I was walking up and down the aisles like we were told to do to make sure they were doing things right. He was connecting the bubbles with his pencil. And it's just because it made no sense to him. And for so many students, that's the way it was. And so after that 27th year, I decided to run for office. and I was elected as a state representative for House District 31 and I served for eight years. I was the vice chair of the House Education Committee. And during that time, I worked steadily on trying to minimize standardized testing. I guess my time is coming up. But I just want to say thank you to Senator Pelton and Senator Colker for bringing this forward because that task force 1241 was not primarily made up of teachers And I applaud you for saying that we need to have people that are living in the trenches to be looking at ways to improve our accountability system. So I'm sorry I didn't have everything. It's costly. It's over. It's close to a million dollars now.

So please, I hope you consider supporting this bill.

Hi. Thank you all. Good afternoon. My name is Carly Holiday, and I am here to represent my personal views as a parent in Littleton Public Schools and as an educator in Cherry Creek School District. Today I want to speak in favor of the legislation from the perspective of the parent and as an educator. To start, every spring for the last nine years, our family has discussed whether my children are allowed to be opted out of CMAS testing. And every year I've come to the same conclusion, to have my children take them. not because I believe in the test nor because I think it'll give me more information than I've gotten from their iReady tests or their assessment scores grades or even direct feedback from their teachers I make them test take the tests because I know others outside of education put a lot of weight sometimes unnecessary weight on these test scores and I know that my children will test well and other parents, families, and students don't have the privilege to opt out. Many don't opt out because they don't have someone at home to take care of them while testing continues at their school, and they also need a meal that day, and so they come to school because they have no other option. As an educator for the past 29 years, I've seen every iteration of standardized testing in Colorado. I've watched students blow off these tests and I've watched other students believe these tests reflect their worth and value, not just as a student but as a person. I've seen these test scores weaponized by administrators and community members against educators without any regard for all the other factors that contribute to a student's score. I want to thank the sponsors of this legislation for bringing it forward. it reflects what educators have been saying for two decades, that we cannot educate when we spend an inordinate amount of time and money on testing. The disruption of schedules and the student day is unfair to students and their educators. It's not just about the days scheduled for testing, but the countless days and hours we also spend doing makeups or verifying whether students have been opted out. For some students, they receive no score as well. We have educators whose only job from February through May is to figure out how to schedule, train, and administer these tests. While I do believe it can be helpful to assess all students across the state using the same assessments, even when some students don't even take them, we need to look at limiting the time and resources we spend on them. I also believe it's essential to enable educators to assess students on the standards they have taught and just receive timely, relevant, actionable data. I just want to assure also that we consider the legislation as amended and begin a plan for implementation that ensures educators' voices are heard and included in this working group. This is not a retreat from assessment. It a realignment with the purpose of schooling to educate our students first on Colorado standards Very good Does anyone have any questions for this panel Senator Snyder does Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you both for being here.

Thank you. So the IREADY test, from what I understand, is every district chooses their own assessment systems that they're allowed to use, and the state has approved certain assessment systems. IREADY is one of them. The Cherry Creek School District now uses STAR. NWEA I believe is another test that is available as well. So they do provide different kinds of data depending on the way that the test is built. But all of them are approved as formative assessments throughout the year for us to progress monitor how it is that our students are doing. The idea that theoretically the scores tell you maybe how they're going to perform on the CMAS test at the end of the year.

Thank you, Senator. Ms. Holliday. Thank you. So I think what's important is that they do provide us with data that not only compares to what it is that we're looking for in the state of Colorado, but also across the country. And so their reference is in comparison to all students, which gives us an idea not only of how it is that students are doing within our own building or district or across the state, but also across the country so that we have a better idea as to how Colorado students are doing. I also would tell you that the feedback is immediate, which is the most important piece, I think, for educators in the classroom because that's the kind of information that they're going to act upon while CMAS data does not come until after the school year is over. I think of it as an autopsy of what happened rather than a diagnosis that I can use to actually figure out what to do moving forward.

Yes, I would encourage all of you to look up the Noonan report. This took a look at every single school in every single district and looked at three factors. The free and reduced lunch percentage, the English language learner population, and the minority population. And what they found out was that just even one, which was the free and reduced percentage of students, if it was high, along with a high well, even that just alone showed that you could predict how a school was going to do. So if you had a high percentage of free and reduced lunch or a high percentage of English language learners or both across the board the schools that had those high percentages did very poorly on the tests And likewise, if you had a low percentage of free and reduced lunch and a low percentage of English language learners, the data shows that those schools do very well. So Cherry Creek, Aspen, Vail, you know, they all do really well. They come from very wealthy places. And yet Adams 14 struggles as well as Sheridan and many of those school districts that have those other kinds of populations. So it's very alarming just to even look at those indicators. And so I would encourage you to think about how this system that we have is really discriminatory. And it needs to be looked at by people that are actually working in the trenches. And thank you very much.

I'm talking directly about CMASS. And so I'm hoping that this bill moves forward so that this working group can take a really good look at what needs to change. Thank you.

All right, thank you very much. My name is Kelly Jones-Wege. I'm here representing myself. I'm also a parent in Jefferson County, and I'm a teacher in the Cherry Creek School District. I've been a teacher since 2006, so I also have seen all the iterations of CMASS, TCAP, PARC, whatever we'd like to call it. I also have a master's degree in political science and public policy, where I did my master's thesis on education reform here in Colorado. And so I did want to actually address a little bit of what was spoken to earlier about the CDE presentation that they gave. And they did talk about the cost of assessments being at right around $20 million a year. And I did testify in a House committee last week where there were a lot of concerns around spending $500,000 to relook at our evaluation system. And I think that's a good question. It was one of the reasons that was used, the same one that Representative Bacon was quoted on, about her in the Colorado Sun, having to do with they had so many concerns around spending $500,000 for a one-time redo of our evaluation system, and yet we spent about $20 million a year on CMAS assessments. And so I did want to bring that up. The other thing is when we talk about teachers, teachers assess all the time. I assess my students every single day. In some way, shape, or form, I am looking at what is going on in my classroom every day with my students, no matter how large my class sizes get. And so when we do that kind of thing, we collect data, we collaborate with our peers. And as a result of that, it actually creates the student buy-in that people are talking about as a struggle right now. And it also creates some parent buy-in. The other thing I want to talk about is as a parent, I asked my son how long he spends testing. And the answer was in fifth grade last year, it was three weeks. Three weeks that he did not do any learning in the classroom at all. And so as we take a look, when I went through and looked at this year for middle school, because he's in sixth grade now, he'll spend three days with testing this year. So that means throughout the course, if there's eight days in high school, because we talked about a couple of days of testing in high school per year, but in the K-8 system, and adding those eight days, it's 15 weeks of education he's not getting. And they didn't talk about eliminating testing. They just talked about lowering the amount of hours. I did actually look into Mississippi and Louisiana hours and how long they spend. This is about half the amount of time that the state of Colorado spends assessing their students on a regular basis. In addition to that, when I take a look at the opt-out rate in Colorado, and there's been a lot of talk around that, about 25% of Colorado students opt out. And yet when we look at our actual assessments, they look at 96% of our students take it, and that's the way in which our system is set up. So we're not measuring all 100% of the students in Colorado. We measure about 75% of them on a yearly basis, and we really need to talk about what we're actually measuring. And I did hear CDE mention very quickly in their presentation that they are measuring systematic issues, not student achievement. I look forward to your questions. Thank you so much.

Afternoon, Mr. Turth and honorable members of the committee. My name is Liz Waddick. I'm a high school Spanish teacher. Actually, I was also an elementary Spanish teacher in the 20 years that I was a Spanish teacher in Summit County, Colorado. My children go to school and some at schools. They are also public school. But today I'm here representing the Colorado Education Association and our 40,000 members. It's hard to not just go on major tangents here. So I just want to stay really focused. The testing burden is real. It's real for kids. I don't really want to talk about the testing burden for teachers because I think that's evident. But the testing burden for students, my own students, my own children end up with bans for their extra, for performing well on the test, for not performing, because no one's watching how they perform. But they're making sure that they're paying attention and being attentive. Then you get all these bans And my son was trying desperately to save these bans that were dangling off during our spring break vacation because he didn want to lose them because they showed how great he did on all of these tests And it is absolutely three weeks. There was one year where our entire schedule was changed because the testing window had changed. And so everyone's breaks. So then people missed it. And then they're taking students out of our classrooms to make up the tests. So the very students that weren't there for the testing, which was supposed to solve the missing class periods or will just test them for two days, mind you, two days is 16 hours. Like, let's really talk about two days. It's a lot. But if they miss those two days, then they pull them from my Spanish class. So remember, when they're gone, they missed my Spanish class for those two days, and now they're being pulled. It's absolutely burdensome on the whole system. The instructional time sacrifice is something very, very important that has to be talked about. We cannot expect to be focused on their education and their growth and our instruction. A couple times it was mentioned earlier was about professional development and support and the things that teachers need. Teachers need time with students. Teachers need time teaching, period. We cannot expect these students to learn more just because we keep testing them. When we keep testing them, we're not teaching them. It's the most important thing. And it's a responsible bill. It's not reckless. This is asking for the people highly invested in the education of students sitting in front of them, the people who have, this is our life's work. I've studied my whole life to be the Spanish teacher I was. And all the people around me. That is what we do. We text all night talking about how to make our classrooms better. I mean, 2 a.m., my Spanish department goes from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. in text because some of us go to sleep early and some of us wake up early. This is our life's work. People, they are absolutely teaching, and the formative assessments that we give day in and day out are the reality. Thank you, Ms. Waddick.

Yes ma'am. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Thank you Madam Chair, members of the committee. My name is Sarah Hunt. I am the mother of a sixth grader and an eighth grader. Dorothy and Walter. But I'm here today on behalf of the Charter Advocacy Coalition. We represent public charter schools. Totaling about 24,000 charter students across the state. We strongly support accountability in public education. And yes, charters operate with flexibility, but that flexibility comes with a clear responsibility to show results. Families deserve transparent information on how students and schools are performing, and charter schools are eager to provide that data. We support making these statewide assessments more purposeful and efficient. As has been heavily covered this afternoon, students in grades 3 through 8 can spend up to 11 hours on assessments, not including prep time, scheduling disruptions, or makeup testing. The process is ineffectual, and I really believe this working group can make it better. We are particularly appreciative of the thoughtful amendment L-001, which allows LEAs the option to administer assessments with paper and pencil. several of our schools follow a classical education model with screen time intentionally avoided until later grades early learners are simply unable to take a computer exam there are many many studies out there I don think this is breaking news to anybody that say that screen time can be detrimental to early literacy It impacts focus attention span and can delay phonics development And so there are many parents that choose models like classical models that purposely avoid screen time in the early grades. This is not a fringe thing. This happens all throughout the state in entire classrooms. and when you put these early learners in front of these tests, it skews the data. They are not showing what can be done and so it makes the data useless and it also makes the diverted instructional time all the more tragic because there's no benefit for the students, there's no benefit for the people who care about the data. There's only time taken away from students. And finally, it's just really unkind to put young children in front of a test that they will fail. You might as well be asking them to speak Greek. And they don't have the emotional capacity to be like, well, the policymakers didn't design this for us, so we're going to be okay. They just see themselves failing. So we really want to emphasize that we appreciate the accountability. We like accountability. We like schools to be able to show what they can do and are appreciative of the sponsors for considering this amendment. Lots of educational models rely on intentional pacing, maximizing instructional time. We want to keep accountability that the public expects. So thank you. We support this bill as amended, and I'm happy to dialogue or answer questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Matt Cook. I'm here today representing the nearly 1,000 locally elected Board of Education members and their superintendents who make up the Colorado Association of School Boards. On behalf of the CASB membership, I'm here to testify in support of Senate Bill 26068, and CASB would like to thank Senators Belton and Colker for the sponsorship of the bill. Madam Chair, everything I was going to say has been expressed by others more eloquently than I. However, I just wanted to make one point. I find it ludicrous that somehow, minus a state mandate, school boards would not be focusing on accountability and achievement. And so I've been watching public education for 20-plus years now. You can kind of guess how old I am. But my experience with school boards is that they are dedicated every single time they get together, they're having conversations around students' achievements, student success, and accountability to their communities. And then further, Colorado voters have not been shy when school boards are not doing that work in changing out those folks. So on behalf of the CASBee membership, I would respectfully ask for the committee to vote in support of the bill today, and I'm available for questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Senator Kolker. You exactly hit it on the head. We find that the district assessments, what work best and what our administrators and educators are telling us are best for our students are the most effective and impactful, and that's where I would like to see this additional time dedicated to those assessments We not anti We just think there better ways to do it and this bill would allow at least the conversation to begin

Yeah, absolutely. Sorry. I always forget. Sorry, Wagy. Well done. You're good. I always forget letting me tell me I can talk. So the first one is I did take a look at Mississippi, and especially because so much has been made about Mississippi's test scores in the last couple of years. And one of the things is that they average between four and a half and seven and a half hours per school year in regards to their assessments. And so that's about half of what we're talking about. And they spend approximately two to three days a year doing their assessments versus the three weeks that I mentioned with my son in fifth grade. And then Louisiana spends a total of six and a half hours. They actually just passed a bill a couple of years ago to lower their assessment time by 20%. So they were higher, but they did decide that it was better for students if they lowered the amount of time. So six and a half hours is the maximum amount of time that students spend, and that's in eighth grade. It's significantly less in the lower grades. So, again, we're not talking about eliminating testing. And then the other part of your question was around what CDE had said, and I had listened in very closely to CDE's presentation in the House Committee as well. And they had a full presentation on the idea that CMASS is not designed to actually measure student learning, but it is designed to measure systematic issues. And it was a question that was asked, I believe, by Representative Hamrick, I think, and they answered the question in regards to the idea that it was about systems. It was not about student achievement or student growth. And so if that's what we're measuring, if we're looking at systems, I'm not sure $20 million when we're looking at a billion-dollar budget shortfall. Shortfall is the best use of that when I keep hearing about all of the other things that we can't fund in public education, especially when only $2 million of that comes from the federal government requirement anyway. $18 million of that is coming out of taxpayer money. But that was the piece of that that CDE had presented on. And they were very specific in their answer that it was about systematic issues. Senator Colker.

Ms. Wagee. Thank you. So one of the things that people have talked a lot about is this idea of accountability. and how are we holding schools and teachers accountable. They want to use these assessments to hold that accountability, which I'm all for accountability. I think we should hold people accountable when things are going well and when they're not going well. So if we're talking about this idea of accountability, and that's what the systematic issue is, is which teachers are failing or which schools are failing or anything like that, lowering the amount of testing that we do for students isn't going to change that. If we decided to just test, and I have no idea what this task force will come back with, but just say fifth grade, eighth grade, 11th grade, which are the three big kind of years that we test as students kind of leave schools, We're still getting the same accountability because we're still testing every year. We're just not testing every kid every year for three weeks when they're in elementary school. And then the other thing that they're talking about with the systematic issues, and we heard a lot, was this idea of equity and this question around, like, where is equity at? And, you know, if we're talking about, you know, the equity piece, the more time we take students out of classes, the more time we take them away from their teachers, the more time we're taking them away from their specials. because my son didn't get specials for three weeks in elementary school. He didn't get to go to music or PE or art for three straight weeks. They lose recess time sometimes. Then we're also looking at about 12% of students in Colorado get extended time. So they're not looking at 11 hours. They're actually looking at somewhere between 15 and 22 hours, because they get time and a half or double time. Those are the students that probably the most need to be in class, and they get pulled the most often because they have some sort of IEP or some sort of 504. So we're talking about questions of like what is equitable. I'm not saying don't hold schools accountable or teachers accountable. I'm saying let's lessen the time that we're putting students there to do that and instead get really good information out of formative assessments, local things. There's NWEA, which is the MAP testing. There's DIBELS testing. There's all, like, IReady, there's StartTesting. We literally have nationwide tests that we use all the time anyway. And all of those things are being used. And teachers get that feedback immediately versus not getting that feedback until July, which students aren't in their class anymore when they get that feedback.

Waggy. You're good. Close. It's hard.

So when we talk about the high cost, I mean, the high cost right now just in that 18.3 is just what the state covers. That doesn't cover what districts end up sometimes having to pay with testing coordinators that they hire or specialists to take a look. So that's not just the cost of districts. But the other thing is that Colorado is a locally controlled state. There's 179 school districts. And moving to this idea that we are going to end up with the same exact system as these southern states, it doesn't work. I don't think Coloradans would ever be okay with getting rid of our local control. I just don't see that happening. And so when we start taking a look at that, yeah, that is one of the key pieces of it. Thank you.

Senator Snyder. Well, I'm learning the difference between those two, but my understanding is that the standardized test is not a one-size-fits-all.

All right. Seeing no further questions, we are going to exhaust this panel, and hopefully we will be pulling up our last panel. Let me call some names. I've got Sherry Bright, Angela Engel, Kincaid Perdue online. Winston Fang online. No Winston Fang. Ariana Josu online. And Melissa Gibson.

Yes.

Questions only, yeah.

Yep.

I don't know.

Is CDE in the room?

If we have questions, we can pull them up. Okay. Why don't we start right here? Thank you for being here. Could you please find the button to turn on your mic? Thank you. Yes.

Thank you, Ms. Engel. Okay, we are going to go up, and let's start with the young man top left in my screen.

Thank you. Very good. And it's a Senate bill and that's okay. You are good. I don't think Senator Colker and Senator Peltner are too upset. We're going to move to Ariana Josu next.

any questions. Thank you, Ms. Josue. And now we're going to go to Ms. Gibson.

Does anyone have any questions for this panel? We have someone up. Questions only. Who's that?

I'm glad you asked that. Sorry, I'm glad you asked that. Thank you, Senator Kolker. So for direct state costs in the CDE budget in 2024-25, under the assessment and data analysis, the line item was $35.6 million. So that's just what's paid to CDE, $35.6 million. The district costs, in 2014, there was a study that was part of HB 1202 that was developed a standards and assessment task force, and it was completed by Augenblick. I'm not going to say this right. Augenblick Paleoic Associates. And they calculated the costs, which included the district costs. So we have 179 districts. what would be the total cost in 2014, they calculated that as up to $78.4 million. Now that was 2014, so when you adjust for inflation, and that number does not include opportunity costs. And we are losing, we have about half a million children in Colorado that are tested, and they spend 11 to 13 hours, that's 9 million hours of instructional time. That has an opportunity cost. And that's how we arrive at the $100 million annually.

Senator Colker. Just one more question. You had stated, too, that kids were taking the test. You've been there since the beginning. Why is that that you particularly opt out from these tests?

Fair enough, and I did too.

Yes, and she is here for questions only, so if you have a question, you may ask her. Thank you.

Ms. Worth-Hawkins? Madam Chair, thank you. Good afternoon, Committee, and Senator Snyder, thank you for your question. Is your question specifically about this bill specifically? What is our position? Yes. Thank you. So as we look at this bill, and I want to make sure that everybody realizes, we also really believe in the importance of preserving instructional time and minimizing testing time as much as possible. So I do want to point out that every year is part of a typical cycle. We're always looking to see how much of an opportunity we have to reduce the number of hours, the number of minutes that students spend on assessment. So we do data analysis, timing analyses. This year, we were actually able to reduce the length of some of the assessments just by doing that. We also are looking for other opportunities to do that. So as we look at the House Bill 25-1278 work that we're currently implementing. We believe that this bill is quite duplicative of that work because there is already a lot of work that went into the 1241 task force looking at ideas for shortening assessments, looking at adaptive technology, other innovative technology that we could use to shorten the length of the assessments. And that's work that we're deep in right now. And we'll be getting a lot of stakeholder feedback. So we also very much believe in and are committed to listening to the field and stakeholder feedback. So this study is informed by a lot of technical expertise, including expertise from national and local technical assessment and psychometric experts, but also very much a lot of technical expertise in our school districts. So our technical advisory panel, which includes expertise from districts across the state, as well as our accountability work group, which includes many stakeholders, not only in our schools and districts, but also from other stakeholder groups, we'll be providing input and feedback on the recommendations provided from this study about how to move forward with shortening the length of the assessments, while also making sure that at the same time, we're looking at some of the things that the assessments are required to do. So covering the breadth and depth of the standards and making assure that the information that is provided is valid and reliable. So basically, we think that the work is already underway, and we very much appreciate all of the perspectives and feedback, and we're looking into how we can best shorten the assessments currently.

Maybe I could rephrase the question. Are you in an oppose, amend, neutral, or support position?

Thank you. Very diplomatic answer. Thank you.

Ms. Worth-Hawkins. Thank you. Thank you for the question, Senator Kolker. So we actually did have a timing reduction this spring for the spring's test in comparison to last spring's test. The students in elementary school ELA who are taking ELA assessments, those assessments were shortened from 110 minutes per unit to 90 minutes. We also shortened the middle school and elementary school science assessments. So there was actually a reduction based on those timing analyses alone. And this spring, we actually believe that we'll have even better timing indication where we can, even without doing any significant cuts to content, make cuts based on having more accurate timing data. So that is one way that we're doing it. And you referenced the adaptive testing. So we're looking at that specifically. That was one of the things that the 1241 Task Force was looking into specifically. but we know that there are other ways that you can shorten the assessments and that is definitely a part of the study and a part of the conversation. We also know that adaptive testing can increase costs by quite a bit because you have to have a very large item bank, which we currently do not have. Even without that, we know that we can reduce the length of the assessments just through shortening, potentially reducing the blueprint and the amount of items and content. And so that that those are things that the study is investigating actively and will be very much a part of the active conversations with all the stakeholder groups, many of whom, most of whom are from districts in school.

Ms. Worthy

Yes, that is correct. So science is not taken at every grade level. ELA and math are. So we are looking, it is very much a priority, very, very much so. We're not only looking at reductions of test time, but also reducing administrative burden. So when we look at the number of units and sessions that schools need to set up, we know that the fewer number of those that you have, the more reduced burden there is just setting up fewer sessions. So we're looking even outside of a study, even outside of a conversation. These are very much priorities that we have to reduce seat time as well as administrative burden connected to the assessments. Finally, Ms. Worth-Halkins, did the state board actually vote on the strike below or

you had another strike below which included a few adjustments i didn't have a first strike below i had the original bill and the strike below and that's it so they voted on the original bill how would they have gotten the strike below miss worth hawkins Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. So the State Board saw a version of the, that we believe was the original strike below that did not include the information about the commissioner appointing a member from the Colorado Department of Education to act as a consultant. And all All the other information was there and also the final strike below also included or removed the information about no resources being provided. But the State Board of Education saw the earlier version that discussed the reduction, the group being created to thank you.

So I appreciate that. Okay, I'm done. Okay. Senator Frizzell, that's what it was. I was like, there's something else. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair?

So I hear you saying they are criterion referenced, but I also know that they're norm referenced in that they are the way that we compare schools to other schools. That's how the growth score is determined based on others. So I hear what you're saying, but I wouldn't say that it's only criterion-based. Okay? Appreciate that. Any other questions? Who's it for?

I'm going to have to ask you to be quicker with your response this time, if you could, please.

On the introduced bill, though? It was on an introduced bill. Well, we don't know what they even voted on. But she said they saw the... Where did they get it? The sponsor says... What?

It was 7-2, and again, there was a small tweak after what they initially saw.

7-2.

Fantastic. Thank you so much. We're going to go ahead and dismiss this panel. Thank you so much. I want to make sure we've called everyone up. There's no one else, right? Nobody else in the room wants to testify on Senate Bill 68? Seeing none, we're going to close the witness phase. Sponsors. We've already done the amendment phase. So we've got the amendment L-001 has been adopted. I think we're ready for closing comments. Thank you. Senator Kolker. You bet.

Senator Pelton. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to say thank you to my co-prime for his passion. He took the time this summer to come all the way out to my district and sit with so many superintendents. I'd also like to say thank you to everybody who came to testify today on both sides. I appreciate hearing from every single one of them. I mean, the bottom line is I've heard from usually when I spent a lot of time this last couple of weeks going to basketball games, state basketball games, because my daughter plays and I had several of my teams there. And I sat with teachers and I sat with parents and I sat with superintendents of those individual schools. And I would hear the same thing. Thank you for running this. Because they really took it to heart that we did all this work and Senator Colker did all this work to make sure that we listened to what they had to say. So I just really appreciate you guys hearing this bill today. And I ask for an aye vote. Very good. Anybody have any closing comments?

Oh, I guess I don't have to raise my hand. I was going to wait for you to call on me, Senator Kolker. I really appreciate the work that you guys have done on this bill. it is hard to go against the colleagues in the lobby sometimes. And I just want to acknowledge that that is what this is. When you look at the 1241 task force that going on it is full of people who get paid money okay So the reason I favor this approach is because it actually has people who work in the classrooms regularly in it and it takes out the people who have a vested financial interest. I struggled with 1241 when it was passed because of the political nature of the appointments, of the 26 people on it. I had superintendents who worked on that and found it to be a highly political committee. So again, it's been out there a lot longer than you have in this space, and I just know this particular task force. I saw you bristle when I said political, but I do find the 1241 task force to be incredibly political, which is why I 100% support this bill. Senator Bright? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Kurtz-Felan, will you please pull the committee? Oh, we should move the bill as amended.

That's a proper motion. Ms. Kurtz-Felan, now will you please pull the committee? Senator Sprite? No.

So that passes 4-3. You're on your way to appropriations. We'll do a quick reset, and we'll be back in three minutes. Three minutes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you Thank you.

Senator Lindstedt. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Education Committee members

Senator Wallace. Thank you, Mr. Chair and members. What a spirited debate I got to hear the end of. I'm very glad to be bringing you a less spirited but nonetheless important bill. This bill utilizes existing resources to create this program, as Senator Linstead pointed out. and it will identify existing curriculum and coursework that will qualify students for entry-level positions into our state government. I'm particularly pleased to be co-leading this legislation with the good senator from Broomfield as the two of us started our path in public service together as interns and then aides in this very building. It was this early introduction that gave us the knowledge and network to make it in government work and I'm so honored to be able to still call him my colleague to this day. This bill is about inspiring that next generation and has innovative solutions in how we, to help spur long-term involvement in our work. Those include identifying and developing targeted positions within state agencies, encouraging the adoption of hiring policies that recognize work-based learning experiences as valid for the state's entry-level positions. So in short, I appreciate the committee's consideration and I look forward to the conversation today. Thank you.

My name is Melissa Walker. I am the statewide workforce solutions director at the Department of Personnel and Administration, and I'm here today very much in favor of this bill. The framing and purpose for this is that state government is Colorado's largest employer, and it continues to face persistent vacancies, particularly in entry-level and early career roles. At the same time, Colorado students are completing relevant coursework, credentials, and applied learning experiences that can be translated into public service careers. This bill strengthens the bridge between education and public service by making pathways more visible and intentional. And this bill will build upon work around skills-based hiring and work-based learning to attract and retain top talent in the state of Colorado. One of the things that we really want to ensure here is that as we're building Colorado for Coloradans, that we are representing that workforce within public service. This bill creates pathways to public service in the department by using existing resources. And it intentionally establishes partnerships among secondary schools, post-secondary institutions, and state agencies. It aligns existing coursework credentials and work-based learning with skills-based hiring criteria for state jobs. And so very much I am a proponent of this particular program and invite any questions that you may have.

Hello, members. Kyle Piccola. Thank you. Thank you to the bill sponsors for bringing this bill forward. I'm here with MSU Denver, and we are in support of this bill. MSU Denver is Colorado's open access university. That means we accept any Colorado resident that has a dream of going to college and pursuing a career path. We have so many reasons to support this bill, mainly because it gives us just one more opportunity to connect our students with on-the-job learning and training while they're still in school, while they're still learning. We know this model works, and I can give so many examples why, if you would like me to, I'll briefly end with we even have a institute for public service on campus. And this institute is dedicated to giving students the opportunities to go into public service because we know that those jobs are valuable and that the state of Colorado needs them. And again, this would just give us one more potential career path to connect those students to. So thank you and we hope that you can support this bill.

We refer to it as the C2 Hub. C2 Hub.

Definitely a potential there. Definitely a potential for our institute for public service. And I can just give you one quick statistic. We also have a program called Earn and Learn, and it's where we pay students to go into these internship programs so they don't have to, you know, hold other jobs while going to school as well. And out of that program, 56% of those students get hired at the employer where they interned. So when we say we know this model works, we know it's effective, We know that it gives the type of training, again, while they're learning and going to school to hold these careers. And to your point, it just gives us another opportunity to connect students to really meaningful work.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, we need young people who are energetic about public service now more than ever. Vote yes. That's a great bill.

I move House Bill 1136 to the Committee of the Whole.

Senators Bright? No. Frizzell? No. Kip? Yes. Rich? No. Snyder? Aye. Marchman? Aye. Mr. Chair? Aye. And that passes 4-3 and you will be off to the Committee of the Whole.

There is no other business. The Senate Education Committee is adjourned.