House Education [Mar 12, 2026]

Representative Bacon. Excused. Radfield.

Flannell.

Garcia-Sander.

Gilchrist.

Hamrick.

Hartsook.

Johnson.

Phillips.

Stuart Kaye.

Story.

Martinez?

Madam Chair?

Okay, we are starting with House Bill 1282. Who would like to start?

Okay. For the sake of the calendar, I will be coming back to you all and asking for Thursday next week. But for now, the proper motion is just to lay over House Bill 1282 until a later date. I move House Bill 1282 to be laid over until a later date. Okay. Perfect. We don't actually need a proper motion. We just have to say it on the mic. So House Bill 1282 will be laid over until a later date. Thank you. Okay. We will now transition to House Bill 1291, and our bill sponsors are here. Who would like to start?

Rep. Goldstein.

Thank you. Questions for our bill sponsors? Rep Hartzok.

I also forgot to mention for the record that Rep Hartzok is here. And Rhett Bacon AML Bacon is here as well She came in and then had to go present her bill in the committee Okay, Rep Phillips.

Rep Hamrick.

Rep. Goldstein.

Would you like Mr. Beck to distribute the amendments now? Sure. I know that we got L2 on our desks this morning. Right. Do you have a list of panels? Great. See? Oh, I thought you were trying to... Oh, I know. Were you referring to L1 and L2? L1. L1, okay. Thank you for that. Thank you for clarification. It's actually one. We're not doing two. You're not doing L2? Okay. And we're not doing L2. Okay, so L1 has been distributed. Do you have anything else to add in regards to L1 at this time? Okay. So next on my list of questions is Rip Garcia-Sander.

Rep Goldstein.

Rep Stewart.

Rep Goldstein.

Vice Chair Martinez.

I will go ahead and call up Mr. Josh Abram, the fiscal analyst.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Vice Chair Martinez.

Mr. Abram.

Vice Chair Martinez.

Mr. Abram.

Rhett Pamrick. Thanks, Madam Chair. And we have been working with CDE on this,

Let's go ahead and do that now since he's up here.

Mr. Abram.

Okay. Since Mr. Abram is up on the dais, do we have any other questions for Mr. Abram? Okay. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. Thank you, committee. Okay. Back to my list of questions. Rep. Gilchrist.

Rep. Hamrick.

Rep Gilchrist.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Rep Gilchrist.

Thank you. Good question. Thank you. So 2270 basically established that, among other things,

Thank you, Rob Hamrick.

because 2270 only applies to highly effective. So with our bill, it would allow the effectives to move to highly effective because they would be having all this professional development, goal setting, all the things that we read that would really grow them as a teacher and make them so much stronger so they can really support their students.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I hope I'm not asking the same question twice. Of course, we all value teachers. I'm currently the Colorado Council of Learning Disabilities Educator of the Year. I'm currently licensed in math and special education. I also have a special education director's license, a doctorate in education, and I'm an education attorney. And I was evaluated in Cherry Creek School District when I taught there pre-191. And I've done RANDA as a special education director more recently, so I get it. As do the well-experienced educators, board members, professors, administrators, and parents that are on this committee. My question is, as I discussed with you previously, what is the legislative replacement for the reduced evaluations, if any? What's in the bill? What's in the bill? We're taking away the evaluations. what is in the bill that would replace that or that would have any kind of requirements

so that sort of bookend stays in there. And then we talked about all the other things, sort of the semi-formal evaluations in the middle. So does that answer your question? Rep Phillips.

So the things that you talked about were just things that are not prohibited. They're not required. They're not required, but we're happy to talk about language with you. But you'll be hearing from district officials, and their goal is to support their students by growing their teachers and by retaining their teachers, and this bill would help them do both.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Now I have to remember my question. With a three-year cycle, is it possible that the evaluation is either much more severe, much more severe, I'm going to keep with that word, than it would be on a yearly or every other year type basis? I'm just concerned about the rubric and that things get slid in a way that every third year you're really digging for something that you could have fixed if you had known sooner. Sorry, that was not a well thought out question. Rep Goldstein.

Thank you for the question. I think the amendment addresses the concern that if an administrator feels that a teacher needs more evaluative support, they can put them right back on the RANDA every year cycle. So does that answer your question? It does.

Rep story. Thank you, Madam Chair. and it's great that we have a lot of passion in the room, but I also think we need to maintain that level of professionalism and not, well, anyway, just maintain that level of professionalism. I appreciate the bill that you're bringing forward, and I look forward to the witness testimony. I think that our educators have been asking for a change in this evaluation system for a decade or more. And I think it's important that we listen to them and hear their concerns about what they are experiencing every day in the classroom. And I've spent a lot of time talking to educators, and they have felt incredibly frustrated with the current system in that it consumes an enormous amount of time that then they are not able to utilize relative to providing all the things that students need in the classroom but also building their craft and doing peer conversations and team planning and things like that because there just aren enough hours in the day. So I look forward to hearing the testimony that's coming forward, and I appreciate that But the timing of building this out so that we're preparing this to be implemented around the time that RANDO would have to go before an RFP, I mean, that timing couldn't be better to look at it in that way. So I appreciate that effort as well. and I don't have any strong questions right now, but I really appreciate what you've been working on and I look forward to the testimony that's coming up.

do i just start sorry yes okay uh good afternoon madam chair and members of the committee my name is jean nita corn and i work as a seventh grade math teacher in the garfield re2 school district i am speaking today in opposition to house bill 26 1291 as an educator i greatly value having an annual evaluation. The school district I work for is in a rural area with limited staff. Despite this, we still find time for both frequent bi-monthly coaching and observation. So the bills propose flexibility with the intent of having more time for coaching seems unnecessary. Annual evaluation is an opportunity for teachers to be reflective, which is one of the most important parts of being a good teacher. In evaluations, we are given feedback about not only teaching content, but classroom management, both of which can always be improved. Formal observations also offer a chance to reflect on the positives, which helps combat teacher burnout. The implication with this bill is that master teachers don't need annual feedback because it will be redundant. I disagree with this because of the dynamic nature of education. In my experience working with many veteran teachers, they often change how they teach topics from year to year based on what is working and what is not. While this bill's goal is to lessen teacher burden, I fear that this bill will not actually lessen teacher burden, rather lessen administrator burden at the cost of teachers' professional development. Evaluations offer teachers the opportunity to look back at what they've done through the year and see how they can improve for the next year. My fear is that by only doing evaluations every three years teachers are working with outdated data To put into perspective three years is the time it takes for one full graduating class to pass through our middle school If a teacher is doing something poorly and they don't know, then for three years they will be poorly teaching that next generation. I disagree with the idea that the local school boards are best positioned to design evaluation systems. By leaving policy up to local school boards, we open the possibility of inconsistency throughout the state. When we are in an education crisis like right now, I worry that this inconsistency will only increase knowledge gaps in test scores, especially between rural communities like my own and urban schools. When I consider my own local school board creating school policy, I fear that there may be a lack of understanding with what aspects of teaching are important and what feedback teachers would like to receive. For those reasons, I respectfully urge the committee to oppose House Bill 26-1291. Thank you for your time.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the committee. It's good to see you all again. Apologize for not being able to be there in person. My name is Nicholas Hernandez. I'm the executive director of Transform Education now. We organize alongside parents of communities across Colorado to ensure that every child has access to a high quality school that expands and supports their child's dreams. We are here today or I am here today in opposition to 1291. And I'm going to be brief because I believe Ms. Paseas can also not be here. She had texted me and let me know she is going to she has to pick up her little one from school. So I'm going to try to be brief on my comments and kind of share a little bit of what she and I had talked about. Essentially, our organization is concerned that 1291 would reduce the amount of information available to schools, to administrators, to districts, and ultimately decision makers at the district and the state level about how to move forward with supporting our teachers. The single most important thing that we believe that we can do to support students, particularly marginalized and underserved students across the state, is ensure that our most effective teachers are in the places with the greatest need. And we can't do that off a three year evaluation cycles. The previous panelists spoke about the the potential impact of working with old data, and that should terrify everybody. as a former teacher, I valued my annual evaluation. It really did help me share my practice. Ms. Basia has asked me to share essentially that teachers, excuse me, that our teachers and the evaluation system is not about punishment. It is about growing their practice. It is about becoming better to better serve our kids. And that is something that we should all both value and welcome and that needs to stay consistent from year to year. With that, I will wrap up and I appreciate your time and urge each of the committee members to vote no on 1291. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you, Madam Chair. I am reading this on behalf of Vernon Jones Jr., CEO of Faithbridge and former school and IZone leader in Denver Public Schools. I write today to ensure that we must prioritize justice for all students by ensuring equitable, effective and annual systems of evaluation that support for teachers that support teachers at all levels. In my time as a school leader I partnered with teachers in the regular evaluation process. It was then and remains now a critical process in ensuring consistent high quality instruction in every classroom for every child and that teachers receive the professional support that they deserve. My evaluation cycles included time with brand new teachers, veteran teachers, and master level teachers. It was always my aim to ensure that the evaluation was a shared process with the teacher that was focused on our shared commitment to give students high quality instruction every day, every lesson. The process and engagement looked different with each teacher depending on where they were in their careers. Time spent together was different. and follow-up plans looked different. What was consistent was that everyone, no matter their experience, was consistently evaluated and supported in ways that would develop, improve, or affirm their practices that were ensuring our school-level commitment to high-level quality instruction. I concur with the concerns that evaluations are a big critical piece of the administrative workload. I concur that to do them well in partnership with teachers requires thoughtful planning, time, the right tools, and teamwork. I affirm that in schools and districts, the evaluation process can feel like an overwhelming burden rather than a way to get better at serving students. Because of resource constraints, like many processes in our schools, it doesn't get our best efforts because we are stretched so thin. Yet, consistent evaluation of our instructional practices is a critical responsibility, and the answer is not in reducing evaluation. The answer is in improving, simplifying, and strengthening our evaluation process so that we will ultimately ensure justice for all students. Justice requires annual evaluations for all members of the instructional team because they impact the learning of all students. Regular and rich evaluation helps us keep a pulse on what's working, where we can improve, and new learnings that can be applied, and how we can be more effective, equitable, and excellent in all of our schools. I believe that we come up with innovative solutions that help us better manage the workload responsibly, improve professional practice, and ensure just learning spaces where all students are thriving. Let's work together toward that end. I urge you to vote no on the bill as presented or to amend the bill to address the concerns that others have raised. Thank you for your time.

long dark brown hair I did go ahead and sign up she timing worked out so that she could make it so Rachel Lee here today on behalf of the Colorado Rural Schools Alliance in support of House Bill 1291 we represent 146 rural school districts across the state serving approximately 135 students this bill addresses a real and persistent administrative burden for our rural school districts you have heard me talk about admin burn and probably more than you want to and this is one of those that again attempts to relieve the admin burden that we have in our schools Many of our districts operate with small administrative teams as you know sometimes one principal is serving as a principal in multiple buildings or we have superintendents who are serving as also building level administrators Requiring annual formal evaluations for every non-probationary teacher in these contexts doesn't improve instruction. It simply overwhelms the very people responsible for doing it well. We believe this bill is a smart and reasonable approach. it maintains rigorous annual evaluation requirements for probationary teachers and for any non-probationary teacher who earns a less than effective rating while giving districts the flexibility to move high-performing veteran teachers to a three-year formal evaluation process. We believe that's a meaningful distinction. It focuses administrative energy where it is needed most. Critically, the bill explicitly preserves districts ability to maintain informal evaluations coaching ongoing feedback outside of the formal evaluation cycle this isn't about doing less for teachers it's about doing more strategically local boards and both BOCES are best positioned to make these decisions for their communities and this bill trust them to do so thank you and we urge an eye vote

To introduce myself, I am Micah Gallants, a senior at Denver East High School. I've spent 15 years attending Colorado's public schools, and I've been involved with this bill for 18 months through the Colorado Youth Advisory Council, though today I represent only myself. I was a member of our education committee, and we talked to teachers across the state about this very proposal. I came away deeply impressed by the shortcomings of our current one-size-fits-all evaluation system. The best teachers feel punished and distrusted, burdened by a system not really tailored for them. For younger teachers, the status quo isn't much better. What I've heard is that evaluations feel generic and unhelpful. For newer and experienced teachers alike, evaluations lack the follow-up, which would allow for true professional coaching and mentorship. Evaluations can be a tool to improve education and empower students. The tweak proposed here would do just that. This bill does not reduce the quality of a Colorado education, neither does it lower standards. Just the opposite. It maintains rigorous standards from the education reform movement and the 70-30 emphasis on student outcomes introduced in 2270. This bill is merely a further revision to empower under-resourced administrations to support our teachers in upholding Colorado's pre-existing high standards. Teachers aren't given more leeway to avoid standards, and administrators are not being encouraged to turn a blind eye. This bill allows flexibility to apply written feedback where it's needed most, allowing for quality mentorships and stronger partnerships between educators and evaluators. A functional evaluation system should identify the bad apples, forcing ineffective educators to either improve or leave. But a quality evaluation system should do more. It should be a space for thoughtful feedback to encourage growth. House Bill 26-1291 will lead to better, more thoughtful feedback for all teachers. It maintains high standards while focusing written feedback where it's needed most. This is policy in line with local control and would meaningfully improve the abilities of our evaluators to bring about growth for educators. Thank you for your time.

Button. I knew it. Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. And by the way great job That was fantastic And a cool name My son name is Micah as well Oh cool Yep It a rarer name So my name is Steve Lash I a high school English teacher and currently president of the District 12 Educators Association, representing more than 1,650 educators in Adams 12 five-star schools. I'm here today in support of HB 26-11291. I was evaluated throughout my 26 years in the classroom long before Colorado implemented the current educator effectiveness system under SB 10191. Since that system was put in place the evaluation process has become far more extensive and what was initially promised as a reflective growth oriented process has crossed the line to becoming a bureaucratic burden. Each year I completed detailed self assessments, wrote professional growth goals, collected extensive data to document student learning and met multiple times with my evaluator. It required many hours outside of the classroom and each year educators and administrators would start the process all over again even if an educator has consistently demonstrated highly effective practice. This doesn't strengthen our schools. Every hour an administrator or effective educator spends on evaluation paperwork is an hour they're not spending planning high quality instruction leading positive educational outcomes or resolving a genuine classroom concern it's not good for schools and it's not good for students and I have to tell you in our schools time is of the essence today is Association president I also help educators navigate evaluation disputes I've seen how complex the SB 10191 system has become evaluators must work through four quality standards, dozens of subcategories, and a state reporting platform with more than 80 screens and check boxes. When a process that complex is rushed or inconsistently applied, it can create real problems for educators and for schools. HB 26.1291 maintains accountability. Standards remain and consequences for underperformance remain. What it changes is how often effective educators must go through this full process. In a time when schools are stretched thin, passing this legislation could meaningfully improve our schools. It's a practical step that maintains accountability while showing trust in experienced professionals. I respectfully ask for your support.

Association of School Executives. CASE represents school districts and leaders from across Colorado, and we are here today in support of this bill. While I serve at CASE today, I've served as a teacher, a school administrator, district HR leader, and state education leader at CDE, So I've been deeply engaged in the educator evaluation system for some years. Case and our members want to begin by thanking the sponsors of this bill for listening, for responding, and recognizing something our superintendents and principals have been raising for quite a few years. Meaningful teacher evaluations and manageable evaluator workload are not competing priorities. They have to work together. This bill reflects that understanding, and we're grateful for the thoughtful attention paid to that. In case we begin understanding that we are deeply committed to evaluation systems that genuinely support growth What we been told by our teachers consistently is that current structure creates an administrative burden that actually undermines that goal for them and for our district leaders When principals are stretched, then completing formal evaluations for every single teacher every year, that process can become more about compliance rather than the meaningful feedback and professional development that every teacher deserves. This bill strikes a little bit of a better balance. It maintains strong protection for probationary teachers and for those who need more intensive support or who are asking for more support, while giving districts the flexibility to design evaluation cycles that allow evaluators to do this work well and not just quickly and not just getting it done. The result is a system where evaluations can really be what they've always been meant to be, which is a genuine conversation about growth, about instruction, and about our student success. Case does support House Bill 26-1291, and we appreciate your time and your consideration. Thank you.

My name is Consuelo Redhorse, and I'm here on behalf of the Colorado Association of School Boards. I also serve as president of the Summit School District Board of Education. I am testifying in support of House Bill 26-1291. Before I start, I'd like to thank the students who brought this forward. We appreciate your advocacy. Colorado's Constitution places responsibility for instruction with locally elected school boards. This bill respects that structure by allowing districts more flexibility in how we approach educator evaluations while still maintaining clear accountability. We know that school boards and superintendents are best equipped to determine the evaluation process suited to their own district's needs and staffing realities. This bill sets a reasonable floor of once every three years and gives districts the option to take a different approach when it makes sense for them. Time is an important resource, and right now, the state requirement to formally evaluate every teacher every year often means principals and administrators are spending a lot of time completing compliance evaluations when that time could instead be focused on supporting teachers who would benefit most from coaching and professional development. As presented, this bill will promote accountability and flexibility, demonstrate a teacher effectiveness earns reduced compliance burden, while performance concerns trigger a closer review. That is a rational and professionally sound framework. Further, nothing in this bill limits ongoing observations, walkthroughs, coaching conversations, or feedback between formal evaluations, which we know are important to providing meaningful feedback that's ultimately best for students. In many districts, the state-mandated annual evaluation process has become more about compliance than about improving instruction. House Bill 26-1291 represents a positive movement towards an evaluation system that provides more meaningful feedback and professional growth for educators. This translates to better learning experience and positive outcomes for Colorado students. Thank you for your time. And CASB, the Colorado Association of School Boards, urges you to support House Bill 26-1291. Thank you.

also the ones that have already testified and will. So I have a couple of questions, and I think mostly to the CASE, CASB, and rural schools folks, but just curious, you said a lot of time. A lot of time is spent by administrators and, you know, in doing this work and obviously the educators too. can you give us an idea of what that investment looks like for an administrator or for a teacher and, you know, whoever, just, you know, a better perception, I guess, of what is involved in getting ready or doing the evaluation itself?

I could say from personal experience, just in evaluative meetings, in preparing for evaluative meetings, an educator will be spending easily four to five hours for preparation for meetings, documentation of evidence. And that is far from the amount of time it takes for us to do our self evaluations, for us to do all of our data collection for student learning objectives, SLOs as we call them, and a lot of the work. I would estimate, and I think I heard an estimate and it sounded pretty close, I would guess that the average educator is somewhere in the range of 15 to 20 hours a year at the bare minimum.

Miss Lee?

And I saw, Ms. O'Neill, you came off mute. Would you like to respond?

Thank you. Rep Gilchrist.

Absolutely. I appreciate that conversation. And there was probably a time. I'm sorry, Madam Chair. Yes, yes. I said your name. Go ahead. Thank you. Madam, I think there was a time that I could answer that much more directly when I was with the Colorado Department of Education today. I don't have a good answer for why there are 20. I think CDE could easily answer that question. But I do want to just say that there are still implementation pieces happening there that's been acknowledged and identified. And I think this could streamline and kind of merge together with some of the implementation that is still taking place over time. So I will probably defer more to the way that CDE is seeing the state's holistic landscape and how that implementation process is working today.

Just wondering if that had anything to do with the fact that it not required Ms O Thank you Madam Chair Can you rephrase that for me just one more time the question when you say when it not required Rep Gilchrist. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just that if we are, that it has the slow of implementation, it has the fact that only 20 schools, districts, have chosen to opt into this, that there's no requirement for that. Ms. O'Neill.

Thank you. Rep Phillips.

Okay. So my question is for Rachel Lee.

Do you mean other ways to evaluate outside of just the in-person driving evaluation?

Thank you, Representative, for the clarification and Madam Chair.

Brett Phillips.

That's actually the part I want legislated. My second question is for Mr. Lash. Good.

Mr. Lash.

Okay. Thank you so much. We greatly appreciate your testimony. I will now call up our next panel of witnesses. Sherry Breitz, Shannon Holston, Janet Matthews, Dina Puente, and Brenda DeConer. I believe a lot of them are online. Okay, we will start with folks that are here in person to testify, and then we will transition to folks online. For those testifying, please start by stating your name and who you represent. You will each have three minutes. Welcome. And this is already on. Okay, perfect. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee.

classroom context, not something that happens. three years ago, and it does guarantee that teachers receive the support they need regularly and consistently. And while I appreciate the amendment being brought today, I don't feel that it fully addresses my concerns that this will be implemented across the board in all of our districts in a way that supports the ongoing professional development needs of our teachers. I would also make the case that annual evaluations are simply good governance. Colorado invests about $10 million in our K-12 public education system, and we know that a large proportion of that goes to our instructional staff and teachers. Regular documented evaluations provide transparency, fairness, and accountability for this significant investment. And then there are the practical implications. I know some of these points were raised in the opening dialogue, but I don't feel that the answer sufficiently addressed the questions. As enrollment declines, we do have reductions in force, and state law requires that teacher performance be taken into account. And if the most recent evaluation is several years old. Districts may not have the most current performance information they need to make those decisions. Well, I think that, and I think the sponsors for the bill for letting me provide feedback on the initial draft, the amendments, as I stated, do not move my position. I was also involved in the discussions in 2022 around Senate Bill 70. And as has been noted in the previous panel, that implementation for the flexible and shortened rubric for highly effective teachers is just underway. I simply just don't understand the need for this current bill when we have that option available to us and that we know that some districts, only 20, but those 20 have already put that to good use, are taking advantage of that flexibility. If evaluations need improvement, making them less frequent does not necessarily mean we're making them more meaningful. So for these reasons, I respectfully urge a no vote. Thank you. Thank you. And I meant to call up one more witness for this opposition panel. Maddie Asher can come on up to the dais, but we will go with folks online. We will start with Shannon Holston. Welcome. Thank you, Chair Lukens, Vice Chair Martinez, and members of the House Education Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify in opposition to HB 1291. My name is Shannon Holston. I'm the Chief of Policy at the National Council on Teacher Quality, or NCTQ. We're a nonpartisan research and policy organization dedicated to ensuring every child has access to an effective teacher and every teacher has the opportunity to become effective. I've also led the implementation of teacher evaluation systems at both the state and district levels. NCTQ has tracked teacher evaluation policies across all 50 states in D.C. for more than a decade. And we appreciate that this bill aims to address the administrative burdens that educators and school leaders face. However, reducing written evaluations for non-probationary teachers from every year to once every three years would weaken a system that should support teacher growth and protect student learning. Research consistently shows that regular observation and feedback are essential to improving teacher practice. And student outcomes and annual evaluations are a core feature of an effective evaluation system because they provide the consistent structured opportunities for observation and feedback. and evaluation systems are most effective when that feedback is consistent and ongoing and not intermittent. An earlier reference cited an Annenberg study suggesting that evaluations don't work. However, I just wanted to clarify that the study examined the overall impact of state evaluation systems nationwide across 44 states and found that on average, they did not produce meaningful gains in student learning. However, the results significantly varied by states and importantly, the researchers emphasized several bright spots and places where evaluation systems did meaningfully improve student achievement. In most cases, these systems shared key features, which include multiple measures of performance regular observation and feedback and guaranteed written feedback for teachers Moving to a three cycle would place Colorado among the states with the weakest evaluation requirements and notably states making strong gains in student learning, such as Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana, continue to evaluate teachers annually. We know frequency matters, and even highly effective teachers benefit from regular feedback. Without it, instructional issues can go unaddressed, teachers lose opportunities for growth, and school leaders lose important touch points to guide development and inform key staffing decisions. In Colorado, roughly 97% of experienced teachers are rated effective or highly effective, and with the passage of this bill would only be required to be observed and evaluated once every three years. Evaluation should be a meaningful tool, not a paperwork exercise, but the solution is to streamline the process, not reduce the feedback teachers receive. There are several practical ways to lower burden while maintaining annual valuations, simplifying documentation requirements, using tools such as video-based observations to make feedback more efficient and build teacher trust, which a recent study has found, or training additional staff such as teacher leaders to conduct observations. For these reasons, NCTQ urges the committee to consider alternatives that preserve annual valuations while addressing some of the concerns brought here today. Every teacher benefits from regular feedback, and every student deserves a system that supports continuous teacher improvement. Thank you for your time. Happy to answer any questions later. Thank you. Up next is Janet Matthews. And you are on mute. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Janet Matthews. I am a retired educator and a retired assistant principal. I am currently working with Faith Bridge educational team, as well as working for DPS as a site assessment leader. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak about HB 26-1291. I wholeheartedly believe that every child deserves a quality education, attend great schools, and has highly qualified teachers. As I look through the lens of both the teacher and the administrator, evaluations are a needed component in the development and growth of a teacher. If the evaluation is effective, it can help in the teacher's growth and development as a professional. Evaluation should be administered every year. If administrators who are doing the evaluation view the evaluation as an arduous task and some things that just has to be done because of bureaucratic bureaucratic formality and they use the evaluation as just a simple, simply a checklist that they have to do, then I most certainly see the reason why they would prefer not to evaluate teachers every year. If administrators would see the importance of evaluation as a necessity for teachers' growth in their profession, then they would understand the critical need of having an evaluation every year. It should not matter if you are a probationary or non-probationary teacher. Every teacher can use feedback on their craft to make it better for the students that they serve. Outcomes for students would be greater if they had highly qualified teachers instructing them. As a former administrator who did numerous evaluations, my thinking was always, I want the best teachers in front of my students so that my students can have the best chance for learning The evaluator is crucial to the teacher that is being evaluated Teachers evaluations are the bridge between teaching and learning. Without it, we are essentially flying blind, hoping that information is being retained without verifying the efficacy of the delivery. By prioritizing thoughtful, comprehensive evaluations, we invest in the most valuable assets in the classroom, the educator and the student. I remember the golden rule of evaluation. It should be something done with teachers, not to a teacher. When the focus shifts from judging to supporting, the whole school culture improves. Evaluations be something that drives the instructional growth and improvement. It should identify specific areas for improvement and provide a roadmap for coaching. Evaluation. Thank you so much. We will now transition to Dina Puente. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Dina Puente, and I'm a community organizer with Transform Education Now. I am also a mother of four adult children and a proud grandmother of four grandbabies and a former ELD teacher. My role as a community organizer is to organize with parents to help them access high-quality schools and help them achieve great opportunities for their children and support them with goals. I'm here today in opposition of House Bill 26-1291. I spend time listening to families about their children needing better school quality and needing support so their children will have the opportunities they deserve. House Bill 26-1291 proposes changing the frequency of formal evaluations for teachers from every year to once every three years. While I understand the desire to reduce administrative burdens on educators and school districts, I am deeply concerned about how this change could impact student learning and accountability in our schools. In the communities I organize in, families already worry about whether their children are receiving the support and high-quality instruction they deserve. Many parents feel that their voices are not always heard when challenges arise in the classroom. Regular teacher evaluations provide an important opportunity to ensure that teachers are supported in improving their practice and that students are receiving the best instruction possible. In underserved districts, especially strong accountability and consistent feedback are critical. Students in these communities cannot afford gaps in instructional quality or missed opportunities to address challenges early. Annual evaluations help identify areas where educators need support, professional development, or resources so that students can succeed. As someone who has spent my life in education as a former teacher and raising children and grandchildren, I know how deeply teacher effectiveness shapes a child's experience in school. Our students deserve classrooms where educators are continually supported, evaluated, and given opportunities to grow, reducing the frequency of formal evaluation risks, weakening an important tool for ensuring educational quality. I urge you to carefully consider how this bill will affect students particularly those in underserved communities who already face systematic barriers to educational opportunity Our decisions today will shape the learning environments of the next generation as an educator mother grandmother and community organizer I ask that we prioritize policies that strengthen accountability support teachers and protect the quality of education for every student in Colorado Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Welcome, Sherry Bright. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Education Committee members. My name is Sherry Brights. I am a 20-year retired teacher from APS, now working with FaithBridge, serving families in Denver Public Schools and with teachers. Teacher evaluation yearly is a must. If it were not for the conditions of our schools, high staff turnover, teacher retention, low performance schools, and brown and black students continuing to fall below proficiency in certain zip codes, I would consider a yes on teacher evaluations every three years, but this is not the current reality. The valuation frequency in 2010, as stated in Senate Bill 10191, was annual evaluations for all teachers. Twelve years later, in 2270, the evaluation frequency was revised to annual teacher evaluations with modified pathways allowed for some highly effective teachers. Now, only four years later, HB 261291 wants to dissolve annual evaluations to every three years. This is not a good decision. In my own experience, yearly evaluations were just part of the job. Yes, it was stressful and time-consuming, but gave me great feedback to drive my instruction, personal growth, and student outcome. Many times it was difficult to be critical of my own work, but yearly evaluations through a second pair of eyes illuminated my strengths and weaknesses that I may have missed. When I think about how often curriculum changes, that is new learning. When I think about the many new students and leveraging their strengths and experiences or areas of growth that I would have to assess and plan for, that was new learning. If a teacher were to change schools during the two years of non-evaluation, that would be new learning. Evaluations are an important tool used for a complicated system, which does not need to be watered down. Our students are at stake. After all, it is about kids, right? We might want to ask ourselves, are we evaluating what's best for kids? Are we asking for change to impact student outcome? I ask that you read between the lines and consider the broader scope regarding the outcome of amending HB 26 1291 and vote no not until every school is removed from the underperforming list and all students thrive learning great schools and achieve their hopes thank you for your time thank you miss assure thank you madam chair and members of the committee i am matthia shore the director of of K-12 education policy at the Colorado Children's Campaign. The Colorado Children's Campaign is a nonpartisan policy organization committed to making Colorado the best place to be a kid and raise a kid. Thank you to Representatives Goldstein and Hamrick for carrying House Bill 26-1291 and thanks to you all for the robust and thoughtful discussion today about teacher evaluations. We appreciate the committee's willingness to engage seriously with questions of educator workload and how to ensure that evaluation systems are meaningful and manageable as we've listened to the discussion on the spill we still have several questions about how house bill 26 1291 would actually work in practice and what unintended consequences it may create for schools educators and students First, we remain unclear about how student growth data would be used under a three-year evaluation cycle. Colorado's evaluation system is built on multiple measures that are designed to provide timely feedback and reliable data. If formal evaluations only occur every three years, how will student data be averaged or incorporated across those years? How will districts ensure that data remain comparable and meaningful? Second, we are concerned about how less frequent evaluations could interact with other district policies. Across Colorado, districts are already grappling with declining enrollment and increasingly having to conduct reduction in force processes. These processes often rely on recent evaluation data to make difficult staffing decisions. If a teacher's most recent formal evaluation is three years old, districts may have less current information to rely on when making those really hard choices. Finally, we think the conversation today shows that there are still important implementation questions that deserve careful attention. Colorado has spent more than a decade building and refining its educator evaluation system through bipartisan legislation and extensive feedback from educators and districts. Before making significant changes to that system, we believe it would be wise to take additional time to fully understand how the proposal would work on the ground and what ripple effects it might create. For those reasons, we respectfully urge the committee to pause on this bill and continue working with educators, administrators, and policymakers to ensure that any changes strengthen the system for teachers and students alike. Strong teaching is the greatest gift we can give Colorado students. Let's be thoughtful and careful about how we deliver. Please vote no. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Questions for this panel of witnesses. Rep. Stewart. Thank you, Madam Chair. My question is for Shannon. You had spoken about research for a research for teacher support systems. And I was wondering if you could elaborate on that. Ms. Holston. Thank you, Madam Chair and Representative Stewart. Yeah, so we, you know, obviously study a lot of the impact of state policy and teacher evaluation policies. I think, you know, we know from the research that observation and feedback really matter and that guaranteed written feedback is critical and it does make a difference for improving teacher growth and student learning. We also know that design and implementation matter. I think we can't ignore the obvious that how these systems are implemented does matter as well. but the you know main key points are that I say this like things only done once or sporadically often are viewed as things of compliance and really the systems that are the best across the country and do make meaningful impact for teachers and students are the ones that have regular ongoing feedback and for teachers as well as using the data that a lot of people have talked about here today for staffing decisions and where to place teachers and risks and things like that. So there is a robust research particularly around the frequency of observation and feedback and how that really does impact and improve teacher growth and student learning. Gilchrist. Thank you, Madam Chair. Maybe a follow-up to that and then I have another question, but could you maybe talk about, you know, I asked about the why the three years and that would sort of be returning to the previous status quo before the bill in 22 happened. Can you just talk a little bit about that Has there been and you mentioned some of this but data that has come out of this new structure that happened from 2270 and how that is has that improved outcomes Has that, or is there sort of evidence to show that we should be reverting back to the three-year timeframe? Ms. Holston. Thank you, Madam Chair and Representative. I don't have specific information specifically on the changes that were made in Colorado in 2022 in terms of that data. What I can tell you is that more than half of states, close to 30 states, do still maintain annual evaluations, And only a handful of states, California, Hawaii, have that span three years would be one of the longer timeframes that states permit in terms of having that cycle of a formal evaluation every three years. Thank you for that. And then just a question, Ms. Ashour, you mentioned how this bill sort of raises implementation concerns. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about, like, the concerns about student growth data being incorporated or averaged and how that making the evaluation longer and how that could impact students. Ms. Ashour. Thank you, Madam Chair. and thanks, Rep Gilchrist, for the excellent question. My understanding and read of Senate Bill 2270, that conversation was mostly about balancing how much of a teacher's evaluation is based on student growth data versus other aspects that the school district might be interested in evaluating that teacher on. In Senate Bill 2270, we moved from a 50-50 split to a 70-30 split. So still today, and I believe if this bill passed, it would remain in place that 30% of a teacher's evaluation is based on student growth data. My question is how we will calculate student growth data over a three-year period, how we will average that data over a three-year period. and these are questions that we've talked with proponents before and I'm just still confused about the exact mechanism or the exact sort of math or formula that will be used to make that determination about how much a teacher has grown students over the last three years versus over one year, if that makes sense. Okay, thank you so much. We greatly appreciate your testimony. I will call up our next panel of witnesses, Mike DeGuire, Don Haddad, Benji Stock, and Fiona Boomer. Welcome to the Education Committee. There's folks on this panel that are in person and online. We will start with our in-person panel. Please state your name and who you represent for the record, and you each have three minutes. We'll start with my left and move down. Welcome. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair and committee. My name is Don Haddad. I'm the former superintendent for the St. Brayne Valley Schools, where I served as a superintendent for the last 17 years. And I want to appreciate your time today For the past 40 years I spent thousands of hours days weeks and months working side with numerous outstanding teachers and administrators and I firmly believe that second only to the parent, a student's teacher will have the greatest impact on their academic achievement success and well-being. Importantly, my thoughts today do not represent theory or speculation. Rather, they are based on extensive, actual, hands-on experience in the area of teacher evaluation. Accordingly, not requiring non-probationary teachers to be formally evaluated and burdened by repetitive paperwork enables administrators to significantly increase the amount of time and support they provide for the probationary teachers. This is really important because I've heard a lot about time, less or more. It's not about less or more for me. It's about who needs it more and where you're going to get your biggest return on your investment. So it's not about reducing workload. It's about shifting strategically. The current system does not allow for strategic implementation. Additionally, and this is really important, formally evaluating, not formally evaluating, non-probationary teachers on a three-year cycle, it doesn't mean in any way, shape, or form that they're not being evaluated. Teachers are being evaluated every single day, every single week, month, year of the school year. And more impactful time will be spent by the teachers and the administrators in the process of collaborating and interacting. They aren't regulated to their offices filling out tedious, repetitive evaluation forms. Filling out forms is not synonymous with evaluating teachers. They're two very different concepts. Instead, administrators can more strategically evaluate teachers by being more visible in the hallways, dropping into more classrooms for observation, spending more time in the lunchrooms, more time at recess, more time at bus duty, more time meeting with parents, more time supporting support staff, and more time addressing school safety, all of which are impacted negatively when an administrator is in their office. Again, it's not about time, it's about how you're spending your time. The reality is that non-probationary teachers are being evaluated every single day. You know, I could continue reading, but really what I want you to hear, a lot of arguments are being made about teacher effectiveness and what's best for students. and I can tell you teachers in their first three years need a lot of time and a lot of support and the ability to shift that strategically is critically important and not be regulated to compliance issues that have not and will not move the needle. Thank you. Thank you. And I understand that I was supposed to pull up one more person with this panel, so Chris Godowski, if you can come up. I don't know if you're online or in person, but I'm going to call up Chris Godowski as well, and then we will go with Ms. Boomer, correct? Welcome to the Education Committee. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Chair Lukens and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Fiona Boomer, and I am the Executive Director of the American Federation of Teachers Colorado. AFT Colorado represents thousands of educators, paraprofessionals, and school staff across the state who are deeply committed to ensuring every child gets the support they need to succeed. We are here today in support of 1291. The bill creates a more thoughtful and effective approach to teacher evaluations actually taking into consideration where educators are while maintaining strong accountability for educator performance and the amendments will ensure local flexibility This bill is something educators have been asking for for years. Under current law, non-probationary teachers must receive a formal written evaluation every single year. While evaluations are an important tool for approving instruction, the current system often places a significant administrative burden on school leaders without necessarily improving outcomes for students or educators. 1291 recognizes this reality and allows districts to conduct formal evaluations of non-probationary teachers at least once every three years while maintaining annual evaluations for probationary teachers and for teachers who receive less than effective ratings. This approach maintains meaningful oversight while allowing principals and administrators to focus their time where it matters most, supporting new teachers, coaching educators who need additional support, and strengthening instruction across the school. Importantly, the bill does not eliminate ongoing feedback or professional support. Districts can continue conducting observations, coaching, and other professional development activities that help educators improve their practice and better serve students. For experienced educators who have consistently demonstrated effectiveness, this change acknowledges their professionalism while allowing school teachers to use their time more strategically. Our educators are professionals and deserve to be treated as such. Educators want evaluation systems that are meaningful, fair, and focused on professional growth, not systems that become compliance exercises due to limited administrative capacity. 1291 helps move Colorado closer to that goal. Thank you for your time and for your continued commitment to Colorado students. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Okay, for our folks online, please state your name and who you represent for the record, and you'll have three minutes. We'll start with Benji Stock. Thank you, Madam Chair, and everybody else. My name is Benji. I work in DPS. I'm an eighth grade math teacher. I am here to speak in strong support of HB 261291. I want to say I love my job. I love watching a kid finally understand that they're a brilliant mathematician. I love to see the moment that algebra starts to click, but I'll be honest with you, our current annual evaluation system pulls me and my peers away from those moments more than it should, while causing us a significant amount of stress and hardship. Let me be clear what I say here, that yearly evaluations of already effective teachers undoubtedly contribute to the teacher shortage and to teacher burnout. Right now, every year, despite the fact that I consistently score very high on my evaluations and frankly have for my entire career, my math team lead has to spend dozens of hours observing me and my colleagues, gathering feedback from multiple sources, and documenting everything across the state system with over 80 screens and checkboxes. Depending on the teacher and evaluator, some of those yearly evaluation points are arbitrary, some are logistically unachievable, and some are downright inequitable. These dozens of hours could be spent walking the hallways, supporting struggling students, or even mentoring a new teacher who really needs the guidance. And during evaluation season, I'm spending that time too, on paperwork, on preparation, instead of the things that I care most about, my students' learning. HB 26-1291 would move evaluations to once every three years for teachers who are performing well. This is not about reducing accountability. This bill keeps the rigorous CDE standards. firmly in place. In fact, teachers who need more support would be able to be evaluated more frequently. This is about using everybody's time more wisely. With that time back, my coach can actually help me grow in real time. We can work together on what my students need right now, not on filling out checkboxes for a report or altering lesson plans to make sure we say the right thing at the right time for the right person to hear. Colorado students deserve educators and administrators who are present and engaged, and this bill will help make that possible. I know its impact will be higher quality teaching conditions for our teachers, which equals high quality learning conditions for our students. I'm urging you to support this bill. Thank you. Thank you. And Mr. Stock, we actually don't see that you signed up. And so if you don't mind signing up online just for our records that we have that you testified today. So thank you so much. We appreciate your testimony. And we will go to Mike DeGuire. Good afternoon, Madam Chair Lukens, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Dr. Mike DeGear, and I'm going to support this bill for a number of reasons. I served for 28 years as a principal at five schools in Jeffco, Boulder, Littleton, and Denver Public Schools. In that role, I've completed hundreds of educator evaluations, both before and after SB191. While in DPS, I served as the president of the Denver Association of School Administrators for two years, and my school was recognized as a distinguished center of excellence by CDE for four years while I was there. I also provided coaching and leadership support for 12 years with dozens of principals, and I had the opportunity to support over 40 school districts for two years as an educator effectiveness specialist with CDE. In that role, I assisted superintendents and district staff in their implementation of the state's educator evaluation process. Regarding this bill, the requirement to evaluate tenured, experienced teachers every year is both a challenge and a burdensome requirement, especially considering the enormous work demands on the life of the principal. It also discounts the skills of the most tenured teachers. Teachers new to the profession need the three years currently required to become proficient in their craft, and they deserve an opportunity to have a full evaluation during those three years. After that time, however, a critical focus for those tenured, experienced teachers needs to be on their own professional growth that they determine collaboratively with their supervisor. This bill can emphasize that focus. When I worked with veteran, tenured teachers not on formal evaluation years, I would do informal walkthroughs often and offer constructive feedback periodically based on observations at that time. This collaborative process did not involve adherence to prescribed lists of objectives that the state or district evaluation system had, but rather it became an emphasis on what the individual proven successful teacher needed to become better at their craft. Specifically, we found ways for those teachers to mentor new teachers, to take on distributive leadership roles, to support our school culture and our UIP goals. In my two years as a CDE, Educator Effective Specialist, I heard from numerous superintendents and principals about the unnecessary burdens they experienced in hearing to the state evaluation system, especially for their effective tenure teachers. Outside national groups have been trying to influence the teaching practice for decades, and unfortunately, many of these groups are supported by organizations that lack trust for teachers, do not believe they can achieve success with their students without rigorous guidelines and standardized requirements. I would tell you that teaching is both an art and a science. The best teachers know how to integrate their knowledge and craft with a deep understanding of child development and sensitivity to overall learning needs of the child. Finally, administrators and educator leaders need to provide an atmosphere of trust, and this trust will happen when they use the excellent skills of their tenured teachers to support their less skilled teachers I encourage you to support this bill I believe it will help and be supported significantly by teachers principals and administrators across the state Thank you very much. Thank you. Superintendent Godowski, welcome back to the Education Committee. Very much, Chair. Good afternoon, sponsors and committee members. I'm Chris Godowski. I'm the superintendent in Adams 12 five-star schools. My testimony today is informed by the first 15 years of my career when I served as legal counsel for more than 40 school districts throughout the state and by the last 17 years that I've served as superintendent in Adams 12 five-star schools. There's been some reference here to pre-imposed 10-191, the bill that was adopted in 2010 and it was in the early years that I was a superintendent and I was glad to see one of the provisions that came into place, which was you would be in a position of being able to conclude the employment of a non-probationary or tenured teacher for unsatisfactory performance. Prior to 2010, what I saw was that as a practical matter, no teachers were dismissed, tenured teachers for unsatisfactory performance. It was a very costly process. There were often criticisms of how the evaluation was done, how the remedial support plan was done. And so in 191, we saw a new avenue that through evaluation if a non-probationary teacher performed poorly for two consecutive years you could head down a path of revoking non-probationary status and conclude that person's employment. We've done that in Adams 12 and that's been a very positive part of 191. In contrast the annual evaluation piece on 191 I think has proven itself to be ineffective for reasons that many have articulated here. I'll share a few additional data points that are somewhat different than maybe some other speakers have shared and I think responsive to questions. Today we had our annual meeting of principals in Adams 12. We had 53 folks present including principals from our two large charter schools that serve about 1500 students each. I asked them what are the most effective ways to improve student achievement and growth in a school. And on the menu were things like high quality instructional materials, highly effective coaching, grading feedback to students that allows them to improve their performance in class, improving pedagogy, doing sprint cycles where we focus on something like formative assessment or a closing activity in class. All of those things receive multiple votes. In terms of annual evaluations for all teachers, zero votes in the room. And the reason behind that is then I proceeded to say, how much do you spend, how much time do you spend on average evaluating a teacher? And the consensus in the room was that about a third of the room said they spend at least four hours per teacher on average evaluating them. And the other two thirds of the room said it was five hours or more.

Okay, we will transition to questions for this panel of witnesses. Rep Phillips.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The things that you just identified, Representative Phillips, I think are things that legislatively or not highly effective school districts are going to do, are doing. and we're going to do it whether the state legislature says we should coach and provide feedback to students that's effective and adopt different instructional materials and all the other things that I listed. We'll do it regardless of whether our local board of education mandates it. I believe strong principals, strong teachers believe in those practices and will do them with or without a legislative mandate. But frankly, we'll be freed up to do those things much more effectively if we're not spending, as an average middle school or high school principal, 100 or 150 hours a year evaluating every single teacher, including the Peyton Manning equivalents who are superstar educators on our staff, and we're still spending four or five hours evaluating them. For what purpose, I don't know, because we can still give them lots of observation feedback, give them tips and suggestions that we see in a 10-minute look into their classroom. We can have a coach come in and give them additional feedback. We can have them look at how a colleague teaches. So in terms of improving the craft of even really highly effective teachers, there's much more time-effective and cost-effective ways to do that than evaluating everyone every single year.

That was the big change in that. But I don't believe it changed anything about the annual evaluation. So really, we haven't had a change in the annual evaluation since 2010. Is that correct? Mr. DeGear. Yes, that is correct, as I understand the law.

Mr. DeGear It's my understanding that I worked with CDE that the percentage of teachers who were rated effective and highly effective stayed the same

No, I don't think you've seen it in terms of data. You know, the thing that I would want to really highlight is when you evaluate a teacher, you know, this concept of every three years is not necessarily accurate because an evaluation ends in May and you start two months, two and a half months later on the next evaluation. And so in between, you're talking about two years, but you're talking about from I finish evaluating a teacher in May and I give them a high rating and I have to start that all over again in August two months later and so it's not really all this time and then you've got the two years in between where there's a comprehensive look at what the teachers doing are their kids to class on time and you see their test scores and test scores are limited in the validity of them but you see those every year. You don't wait three years to see them. Teachers, if they feel like they need extra support, can certainly request another evaluation. But having been a principal for years at every level and a superintendent, I know how critically important it is to spend a lot of time with those teachers in their first three years before I make the decision that they're going to become a non-probationary teacher. And if I have to water that down, and it's not a matter of professionalism. It's a matter of there's a limited amount of time, period. And so I want to make sure in those first three years when you're being evaluated every single year that by the time I say yes to your fourth year, that I know 100% I'm ready to make that commitment. And these other teachers have been evaluated for three years in a row, and now they're being evaluated very quickly every, really it's every two years. And even in that two-year interim, they're being evaluated all the time. And in fact, the evaluation becomes more comprehensive because now I can be in the hallways to see how they interact with kids in the halls. I can be in the lunchroom. I can be at the football game or the basketball game where they're going to be, coaching, et cetera, et cetera. An evaluation that's formal every year means you go into their classroom, you watch it for the entire period, and then you might go in one more time that semester and you watch it and then you put together, you spend actually more time on the paperwork than you do observing the teacher. And so it's really important that we don't get locked into this mindset that it's a workload issue. It's not a workload issue. It's a strategic implementation of the amount of time you have to get the highest return on your investment. And that's what it's all about. And I'm telling you, the first three years are critical. I am never not evaluating a non-probationary teacher. You also have parents evaluating them. They're going to call you. You're going to see what's going on. As an elementary school principal, if I have 45 teachers and I have 10 classified staff, how is it that I'm going to spend the time I need to where I strategically am going to get my return on the investment if I have to spread that time out and spend it in a low return on the investment of the overall system? The other thing I've heard a lot about fiscal notes, I will tell you there are programs that make a huge difference. You know, your career in tech ed programs, your P-TECH programs, your TREP programs, your internships, your apprenticeships, all of these things are going by the waste side when you are putting money into something that isn't returning on the investment. And those programs, by data, show results. This does not show results. You know, as a superintendent, if somebody came to me and said, I want to implement this program, and I would say yes, and what's the measure of success? And how are we going to monitor that? And if after a year and a half or two years I was not seeing a return on that investment, I'm not going to keep pumping millions of dollars into it. That's not sensical, and it's not fiscally responsible. The other thing is school boards have been elected by their communities. I have a lot of respect for the election process and democracy. School boards were elected to oversee this. So when I hear things like, well, they can't be trusted, or they're looking for a way out of work, etc., that could be said about any elected official. But it's not true. These are highly committed people who are spending a lot of time. And I will tell you, as a superintendent, there was nothing more important to me than a great teacher in the classroom. I taught for several years. I have children. I want the teacher in the classroom to be the best. But in order for that to happen, I have to be allowed to strategically implement the system. And that's what's missing. And so as I've sat in the audience today, I've heard a lot about workload and burden. And it's not about that. It's the same amount of work. It's just where you're putting your work into. And the other thing is, as you guys grapple, as the legislature grapples with some really tough fiscal decisions, I will tell you, if something like this takes priority in terms of money over the programs that help children, that would be a severe mistake. We cannot continue to allocate money where the results aren't there, based on a theory. or based on a hope or based on an agenda or anything else. We have to look at the data, and the data does not support this. And these are really, really important things. And again, I will support the evaluation system to the nth degree until that system takes away my ability to increase student achievement and success. And when you put time, where time is not necessary, and take it away from where it is, and you actually pay money to do that, it's nonsensical at every level. So thank you.

Vice Chair Martinez. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, panel. So I have a couple questions. We've been hearing a lot around this talk over, you know, since this was scheduled around, you know, that teachers are leaving the job field because of this. What, I guess, what percentage of the teachers that you all have worked with are leaving the job field specifically for this, or is it a correlation of things? And any one of them. We'd like to answer that question. Go ahead, raise your hand if you would like to answer. Dr. Haddad.

And Ms. Boomer.

Vice Chair Martinez. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I appreciate the feedback on that. And like you said, it sounds like that there is some massive issues issues with how the evaluation process is being conducted. And you brought up, if it's not working, is it really effective and is it doing what it needs to be doing? So I guess my question would be then, is this bill, knowing that it's the same system then, you're just taking it from one year to three years out in that, is that going to be effective in the long term or is another solution to change how the evaluation system is conducted then to be more effective to get the data that you need. And for folks online, if you do want to respond to any of these questions, just raise your hand, please. And I see Mr. Stock's hand is up.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This question is for Dr. Haddad. You had mentioned, while answering Vice Chair Martinez's question, or perhaps it was Rob's story's, that we're not seeing the results in the evaluations. And I'm just wondering, what do you mean by results? Because we evaluate people, like what kind of results are you looking for through these evaluations?

I hope nobody is saying or thinking teachers and administrators are looking for less work. I think, again, I keep asking the same question about is there, what are the other opportunities besides just saying, oh, no more annual evaluation? Like surely there are other solutions. Yeah, that's a great question. because, you know, one of the things that we were able to do is extend the school year in the month of June for K-8 students. So now they have an extra month, and then we were able to start the school year two weeks earlier as a jumpstart program, so we condensed that three-month period of time, and we put resources into doing that. And teachers jumped at the opportunity to staff those positions because they know that that's what's going to move the needle. I heard a lot about the fiscal note here, and I think it was, was it a half a million dollars? That's the cost of about four administrators. And when you look at how many administrators have been hired to manage this system, it's way more than four. And they're spending time doing this paperwork.

So this is not about evaluating or not evaluating. Non-probationary teachers are always being evaluated. They may not be accompanied by a document, but they are always being evaluated. Thank you.

Dr. Haddad. Yes. And that's what I considered every year as a superintendent. Do I want to put millions of dollars into this system that's not yielding results, or do I want to build out welding programs and optics and machining and electronics and AI and quantum? Do I want to hire more teachers? Do I want to pay them more? Do I want to recruit? You're making the same decisions that we have to make every day, and that's where it becomes concerning that this fiscal note, it's critically important. And so we want to make sure that if we're going to spend the money, even the money that we're spending now, that we can say, stand up and say, it is working. And I just don't see the data that supports that.

Superintendent Godowski. Chair, I'll just add briefly that there has been some discussion that suggests that an annual written evaluation is just an inherent good and that it's commonplace throughout the employment sector, private and public sector. I don't know that that's the case. I often have materials shared with me that are prepared by the Society of Human Resource Professionals that look at private sector, public sector practices, and really what they suggest is that many companies and organizations are moving to the system that so many of us have described today, which is not a formal written four-hour, five-hour-plus written evaluation every year, but we give bite-sized feedback and in the moment, timely, ongoing throughout the course of the year as we observe things with our employees. So what we're advocating for here, I think, is actually becoming more the standard than the exception throughout lots of sectors of the economy and lots of employers. And number two, those SHRM materials often suggest that the typical number of evaluates that a supervisor has is six to eight in the private sector. If you've got 25 or 30 of them as a middle school principal, a high school principal, and you're spending four or five hours on each one, as opposed to my experience in the private sector, probably about an hour. That's the why behind a lot of us saying there's got to be a different way than every year, four hours,

Good afternoon everybody Okay thank you I like to thank the committee for giving me this chance to talk about House Bill 26 which I here to speak in support of It's been a long afternoon and you're hearing a lot of the same trends, so as I'm looking at the comments I prepared, you're going to kind of hear some similar things. My name is Virginia Lindeman. I've spent my entire career in public education in numerous roles preschool through high school. I have worked in special education. I've been a teacher, I've been a district-level curriculum coordinator, I've been a school administrator, and I've been a district-level assistant director. So I've evaluated them all at any given moment. Currently, I am a faculty lecturer at Metro State University of Denver. I work in the alternative licensing program where I teach and coach people who are working towards their alternative license and masters in teaching. So I work with teachers in every district in the Denver metro area, including Denver, Jeffco, Aurora, 27J, and Clear Creek. So this bill has the power to give schools something they desperately need, and that is time. The evaluation process is an important one that gives teachers feedback and supports growth, but it's not the only structure that creates those opportunities. Teachers who have demonstrated they are effective or highly effective need a differentiated approach to their growth, and annual evaluations are not going to give them more information about what they already know, which is they're doing pretty okay. Consider a high school administrator who is evaluating AP Calculus or a German 3 class sitting in a class for 45 minutes. We can give them feedback to a point, but after that they really need to be collaborating with their peers on their content area and their pedagogy to be really making a highly impactful lesson plan and an assessment system. From an administrative lens, the job is pretty unmanageable at this point. That's been a topic of a lot of consideration. If you think I was an elementary principal who had 35 people I was evaluating on top of my support staff, on top of my other folks, the admin staff. So we have kind of talked about the time that that takes and not, as Dr. Hadid eloquently said, it's not that we don't want to put that time into it. But if we're working with a teacher already that is highly effective or highly competent, we're working on something that ain't broke. And we could be doing something differently. And we know that most people who are leaving in the profession within the first five years, and we need to be smarter about systems that are supporting people in the time, in their moment of need and what they need in the right time. Some might say this would compromise teacher accountability. I would say that might be a misunderstanding about the role of evaluation. It's not the only tool we have to ensure fidelity and high-quality instruction, and it's not the only data point that we're using to work with our people. Teachers are not closing their doors and teaching in isolation. We're seeing them in multiple settings. We're seeing them in committee meetings. We're seeing them working with parents. We're seeing them work with their peers. All of that is data that lets us know when a highly effective teacher is still effective. So in short, I hope you pass this bill and give teachers and schools the gift of time. Thank you.

Hi. My name is Henry Woban. I work at Emily Griffin High School.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm technically challenged, I guess. Hi, my name is Henry Roman. I work at Emily Griffin High School as a math teacher. I also the former president of DCTA and worked intimately with the district budget First I like to thank the sponsors of this bill And as I reflect on the passage of Senate Bill 191 in 2010 and its impact in Denver through LEAP, and LEAP is our teacher evaluation system, I'm struck by the extent to which this system has added an additional bureaucratic layer to an already demanding and taxing profession. But it has also moved away valuable resources from the classroom. To sustain this system in Denver, this system on steroids, I would say, Denver has created STLs. Those are senior team lead positions in which individuals spend half their time teaching and the other half doing evaluations. This cost plus the incentives cost Denver more than $10 million each year. So I guess these are some of the intended or perhaps unintended consequences of the current system. If our goal is truly to provide better support for students, these 0.5 FTE positions should be reassigned to classrooms to reduce class size. And I would say, interestingly enough, here in this conversation, I mean, you know this, rather than saying what's wrong with the system, the system in general, where there's a lack of health, health care, no health care, no child care for many of the impacted families that we serve. None of these basic things. We still point back to the teacher, to the educator. The teacher is perhaps not being responsive enough. What are you doing with your data? all means all. All these platitudes that we insist are important, when in reality, we have a broken system with not enough funding. And in many cases, we have broken human beings that are in front of us that need compassion. This also reminds me of this quote, I don't know what I remember, but it's from George Bush, the soft bigotry of low expectations. Is it really low expectations or is it that we are doing the best we can, given that all the systems around us are crumbling and we're doing what we can. So with this in mind, I would say let's be strategic about the resources we do have and focus on the business of teaching instead of punishing educators who have demonstrated that they're already effective. Thank you.

Madam Chair, members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to advocate for our children and youth. And it's nice to be in person in front of this committee again and during daylight hours. My name is Dawn Fritz and I'm Colorado PTA's Director of Legislative Engagement. I'm proud to represent our nation's oldest and largest child advocacy association. Our mission is to make every child's potential a reality by engaging and empowering families and communities to advocate for all children. Colorado PTA supports House Bill 26-12-91. Every child deserves access to a high-quality public education, and great teachers are at the heart of that promise. Parents know that the quality of a child's education is deeply connected to the support and stability of the educators in their classrooms. With the continuing trend of teachers leaving the profession, families across Colorado are increasingly concerned about the impact of the teacher shortage has on public schools. Colorado's educators work incredibly hard every day to meet the diverse needs of students in the classrooms. Parents see that dedication every day. Educators deserve evaluation systems that are meaningful, supportive, focused, and focused on improving teaching and learning not systems that may primarily be administrative exercises House Bill 26 makes a thoughtful adjustment to the current evaluation framework by allowing non teachers who have demonstrated effectiveness to receive a formal evaluation every three years instead of annually in maintaining annual observations and feedback. Importantly, teachers who receive an effective rating of less than effective will continue to receive that more frequent evaluation and support. This balanced approach maintains accountability while also recognizing the professionalism and experience of our educators. Colorado PTA believes that this bill has the potential to benefit students in a very practical way. Reducing the administrative burden of yearly formal evaluations can allow principals and instructional leaders to spend more time doing what matters most, supporting teachers in the classroom and engaging with students. We appreciate that this bill preserves the key elements of the evaluation system, including ongoing observation and additional support for the educators who need it. Those safeguards help ensure that quality instruction remains the focus. For these reasons, Colorado PTA supports House Bill 1291, and thank you for your thoughtful consideration of PTA's position. Thank you very much.

Okay, sorry. Can you hear me?

All right. Good evening, everyone. I'm Dr. Chris Page representing the Pikes Peak Alliance and the Harrison School District 2 School District. And we are in strong support of House Bill 1291. There are so many things that you've already heard throughout the day that align to the practices and best practices that we want to have for all of our educators so that we can have the best educators in front of our kids. But things that I want to make sure that we emphasize. One of the things that House Bill 1291 does is allows a level of flexibility to exist for all educators. And while we understand that we want to continue to improve the practice, we want to continue to grow, we want to continue to articulate ways in which we can support our teachers, we also want to provide a level of flexibility that allows us to be malleable within education in a way that is going to continue to move us forward. The idea that you might have a longer amount of time for a more veteran teacher also gives them the credibility and the ability to continue to flex within those three years to grow their own craft and to be supportive of some of our newer teachers or our newer people to the industry in general. It also allows a level of efficiency and effectiveness that we haven't seen so far. As we continue talking about how we make a bigger and a better mousetrap, this does exactly that. We have to have the ability to grow the evaluation system from its initial inception for 191 to a new level. This provides that next step to a new level. There are more iterations of the bill that will need to happen, and we'll continue to have to have growth in the development of how we evaluate our teachers and our profession. But we believe that this is the next appropriate step in that growth. And last but not least, as we watch the development of the process in and of itself, we are seeing that our more veteran teachers are getting stronger, but they still need that ability to give back then to our first teachers for that three for 33 value, right? We talk about that idea of the first three weeks equaling 33 weeks of greatness in a school. Well, the first three years provides for 33 years of greatness. And so if we can allow that opportunity opportunity and that flexibility for our educators to have more than just an every year evaluation, but instead be able to give back to their profession, I believe that this is going to be an opportunity for the process to really grow and develop. We believe it's been thoughtful, and most importantly, it's legislation that makes sense. Anytime we take into account the people who are being impacted by the system, we have made a better system. So once again, on behalf of the speak alliance and harrison school district 2 thank you for your time and consideration and we strongly support house bill 1291. thank you questions for this panel of witnesses

thank you madam chair again i appreciate all the folks that are here providing testimony and i I think it's incredibly important that we're having this discussion. I'm sorry, I don't remember your name. Thank you. So, Virginia, successful models. I'm curious if there are other successful models out there for evaluation that provide perhaps better data on teacher effectiveness. And if so, how might those be applied if we change the frequency of the formal evaluation? I believe based on everything everybody's been saying, evaluations continue on even if there's a formal evaluation every three years. But if so, how could these successful models be applied if we change the frequency of the formal evaluation from every year to every three years?

Ms. That's a big question. I'm not sure I can speak to a specific model, but what I can speak to is if we think about systems, we have that macro view of a system. And so when you think about a school and you think about a district, they often have priority improvement strategies and things like that they're looking and that they're constantly trying to monitor. And really, I have found that things like the instructional rounds models or those models models where we're looking at systemic practice are usually what move a school in a positive direction. So you have the whole system part of it, but you also have the parts of the system which are the teachers, right? And so I think what I would speak to is we know when teachers have opportunities to collaborate, when they are looking data at data and they are looking at data thoughtfully and looking at what best instructional strategies and processes can be used and how they can be implemented systemically. Those tend to move the dial. Thank you.

Thank you so much. We appreciate your testimony.

Hi, my name is Kate Berger, and I am a Senior Managing Director with Teach for America Colorado. First, thank you so much for having me here and the intentionality with which you have approached teacher evaluation always. In the role of TFA Colorado Senior Managing Director I design and direct programming for 130 beginning teachers every year Additionally I was a public school educator for two decades one as a teacher one decade as a teacher, and one decade as an assistant principal and principal. Through that work, I worked with thousands of students and coached hundreds of teachers, many of them novice over the last 15 years. I appreciate continued focus on strengthening the educator workforce and evaluations, accountability, and professional growth. Some concerns I have about the impact of the implementation of this idea as it's currently written. So I've worked with many early career teachers who are rated effective in their first year and are non-probationary depending on the organization, and it's that group that I'm focused on today. So evaluation systems are not just compliance tools from my experience as a school leader. They are one of the primary ways we provide coaching, feedback, and support to educators, particularly those early in their careers. They're also an annual benchmark for formal observation and evaluation every year, and that gives us a specific target toward which we can coach the teachers. So while the bill is grounded in the idea that effective teachers may not need the same level of formal evaluation every year, newer teachers, even those who are rated effective, still benefit from frequent feedback and structured reflection, even when they're performing well. And I know personally that formula evaluations take time. I have done hundreds of them. And there are a million other things that we can be doing. Some of them are wonderful things that we should be putting more time to. But I want to make the point that they also hold, these annual evaluations also hold administrators accountable. The bill allows for ongoing coaching, and there's no guarantee that administrators are going to be observing or coaching at all. So with all the other things on administrator plates, yearly required evaluations make sure that there is conversation about classroom practice at least once each school year. I'm particularly concerned about early career teachers at smaller schools where the administrator is the single administrator who is also the instructional coach. It would be truly tragic if that administrator was unable to prioritize any coaching and a teacher received no feedback for even one year or 10 months, let alone three years. From an implementation standpoint, districts would need to carefully balance flexibility with the need to ensure that early career educators continue receiving consistent feedback and support. That's particularly important at a time when we are working hard to retain new teachers and help them stay past that three to five years. Thank you. Thank you. And it sounds like someone online raised their hand to testify in opposition. Carrie Burnett.

Hello. Thank you to the chair and the members of the Education Committee for the opportunity to give testimony today on House Bill 1291. My name is Carrie Barnett. I'm a nationally board-certified teacher and currently teach 9th and 11th grade English. I am also honored to lead my department at Grandview High School in the Cherry Creek School District, and I'm speaking for myself. In my 25 years as a teacher in Colorado, I've had many positive experiences with the formal teacher evaluation process Many administrators approach the process with seriousness and fidelity And my current evaluator a former English teacher has spent time in my classroom observing multiple parts of a lesson, observing my interactions with students, and observing the balance of a co-taught classroom with my ML co-teacher. She's provided actionable feedback, professional conversations that challenge and reaffirm my practice as a teacher. That feedback helps me refine my teaching and better support my students. This is what an effective evaluation process looks like. The proposed legislation raises four concerns for me. First, the evaluation process for non-probationary teachers has been inconsistent. Implementation varies greatly from district to district, building to building, and occasionally even inside the same building. The changes proposed in the bill have the potential to exacerbate this problem. Second, the bill could expand administrative discretion over when teachers are placed on a one-year evaluation cycle rather than a three-year cycle. Without clearly defined criteria and procedures, this could introduce more subjectivity that's neither in the teacher's or the administrator's best interest. Third, if non-probationary teachers move to a three-year cycle, evaluations need to be more robust to ensure that teachers can enter a three-year cycle with confidence in their future development and performance. Finally, the shift to a longer evaluation cycle may have implications for workforce decisions. As Colorado districts experienced declining enrollment, reductions in force are becoming more common. Under current law, teacher performance must be a significant factor in these decisions, and if a teacher's most recent revaluation rating is several years old, districts may have less current documentation available when determining which educators to retain. A strong evaluation process is effective and efficient, including meaningful classroom observations, professional conversations, and actionable feedback that help teachers grow in their practice. please consider my concerns so that we can create a process that remains fair transparent and supportive of teachers thank you for your time thank you questions for this panel of witnesses

Thank you so much, Madam Chair and members of the committee. I'm Mary Bivens. I'm the Executive Director of the Educator Development Workforce Unit at CDE and happy to be here to answer questions today Okay thank you for being here Questions for this uh for Ms Bivens uh Rep Gilchrist Thank you Madam Chair Um thank you Ms Bivens I was just wondering if you could, uh, two things, talk a little bit about implementation of, um, Senate Bill 70 and,

Thank you so much. Yes, there were several main components from the 22-070 bill, some that were completely implemented and have been implemented for several years now, such as the conversation of shifting from 50% professional practices and 50% measures of student learning that equal the final effectiveness rating to the 70-30 split. So that's been fully implemented and was rather quickly. Another big component that we are deep in implementation is the requirement that legislation made for evaluator training. So all licensed principals and administrators to renew their license and all newly prepared principals in our Colorado prep programs must be trained on best practices around observation and feedback. So some of those components are fully embedded. The one that I think has been referred to today that is still an implementation stage is what is called the highly effective. process. So in that bill, it allowed for anybody who any teacher who had actually any educator, not just teachers, who had earned highly effective for three consecutive school years on their annual evaluations to be in a modified process moving forward, if the district so choose to not only adopt the highly effective process in their district, but also then to say which individuals would qualify for that within their district. So that just went into place with the department was charged with developing the process. And so that just went into place in the 24-25 school year. So that was the first school year that any districts could adopt it. In that very first school year, you have heard 20 districts did adopt it. Currently, in the 25-26 school year, We don't know for sure how many have adopted it because we don't get that data from them until about the end of the evaluation cycle. Anecdotally, we can see in our performance management tool that at least 22 districts have activated it that happened to use our state-offered performance management tool. But that doesn't count the ones who are using it and ones that use locally created systems. So we believe there's an increase this year, but we don't have hard numbers on that. The highly effective process is really important to understand because it doesn't change the student measures side of the evaluation, that 30 percent. That still happens. What it does is it modifies or reduces the risk. rubric to let an educator and their evaluator customize the rubric significantly down to what they want to work on, their focused areas for the year. So it's not a rubric that would be for everybody. It's sort of customized. So there's currently four standards and 17 elements, for example, in the state model rubric for teachers. They would customize that down to just five of those 17 elements at most. So they can focus in on what they want to work on. But again, they're still evaluated annually, and they still have the 30% of student measures. So I'll pause there and make sure I answered all of your questions. We're happy to provide more.

the original bill, Senate Bill 10191. But no, it is no longer required. That actually shifted with the 2270 bill. So no longer is there a mandate for state assessment data. But of course, and it actually went a little further, it said that you could no longer include data attributed to students that aren't enrolled in your school. So you couldn't use state, a district-wide SPF data, for instance, on state assessment for everybody because it wasn't for students you have in your own building. So there were several components of 2270 that that reduce those mandates and no longer requires any statewide summative assessments to be used in teacher evaluations. Thank you.

And thank you all for being here. Please start by stating your name and who you represent. You each have three minutes.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair and committee members. My name is Sue Ryden, and I'm here today representing the nearly 700 community leaders who are members of AAUW, the American Association of University Women of Colorado. We are in strong support of House Bill 1291 AAUW is one of the oldest women organizations in the country empowering women since 1881 The mission of AAUW is to advance equity for women and girls through research education and advocacy. Public education is our top priority because education is the main pathway to economic security for women and girls. We've made progress over the years, but there have been setbacks. And And one of those setbacks is the growing loss of teachers in our public schools. And while we support teacher evaluations, Colorado has created a system that is so onerous, it discourages teachers rather than encouraging them to remain in the profession. Annual performance evaluations play an important role, especially in the early career years, as several people have already stated. But after being tested and proven, teachers should be given the respect that they've earned. Studies have shown that forcing a master teacher into a redundant annual cycle reduces job satisfaction. It's counterproductive to force teachers to spend valuable time going through this arduous process rather than focusing on student achievement and professional development. HB 1291 offers a measure of relief for veteran-proven teachers by requiring a full evaluation every three years instead of annually. AAUW of Colorado strongly supports HB 1291, and we urge your yes vote in committee and throughout the process of becoming law. And thank you for your kind attention, and I'm certainly available for questions.

Good evening, Madam Chair. It started out to be a good afternoon, but now we're well into the evening. Thank you, as well as the members of the committee. My name is Eric Nelson, and I'm the President of National Action Network Colorado, and I stand in full support of 1291. This has been a very interesting debate going back and forth and listening to the opposition or what have you. But I also served on the CASB and BOCES and APS board, and I understand firsthand the challenges educators face daily, because I believe this bill, 1291, strikes a necessary balance between accountability and trust in our educators. And I think we need to be mindful of that. requiring evaluations once every three years is pretty reasonable, in my opinion. And it pretty much respects teachers' professionalism while still providing accountability. Now, more important, if a teacher receives less than an effective rating, this bill allows for additional oversight the following year, ensuring that students' needs are met. Now, supporting our educators while maintaining high standards is vital to strengthening our education system. And I believe the amendments that have been addressed on this have been pretty much and will be addressed in those concerns that the opposition has put forth. So I urge the committee for a yes vote as amended. for the betterment of our schools and communities with a huge thank you to both representatives for bringing this important legislation forth. Thank you so much.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak in favor of House 1291. Is the audio okay?

Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?

Do you have two devices on? Not now. No. No. Let me see.

Okay, yes, there is quite the echo now. Can you hear me now?

Go ahead.

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Okay. If you can hear me, I'll go ahead. Yes. Perfect. I am really sorry. I've been having trouble with my audio. Madam Chair and members of the House Education Committee, thank you for this opportunity to speak in favor of House Bill 26-1291. My name is Judy Solano. I'm the chair of a nonprofit called Advocates for Public Education Policy, or A for PEP, as we call ourselves. I'm also a retired teacher of 27 years. A4PEP has long respected and supported the profession of teaching. We believe every child deserves a well-qualified state-licensed teacher. We acknowledge the importance of teacher evaluations for the purpose of improving the craft, skills, and methods of teaching. The art of teaching generally improves with practice in order to reach a level of comfort and proficiency in the classroom. Some say it takes a minimum of three years for beginning teachers to feel comfortable with classroom management and instructional skills. Effective teaching requires practice, experience, and guidance from veteran peers and supportive principals during their probationary years. Our organization recognizes the importance of annual evaluations during this learning period for probation for probation educators. However, annual evaluations for non probationary teachers is burdensome, time consuming, time consuming and unnecessary for both administrators and for effective and highly effective educators. For those teachers who have reached a level of effective and highly effective proficiency and receive their non status a three evaluation schedule is more appropriate efficient and less burdensome for everyone Additionally, this bill would free up time for administrators to offer guidance and support for new teachers and finally there is no hard evidence that annual evaluations for non-probationary teachers has improved student outcomes since the passage of senate bill 10191 i strongly support our organization a4peps strongly supports house bill 26 1291. thank you

It was on. I was going to say I hit the button and then it didn't work. Good to see everybody again. My name is Kelly Jones-Wagey, and I am testifying on behalf of myself. I am a 20-year veteran educator. Right now I'm working in the Cherry Creek School District and have for the last 16 years. Prior to that, I worked in the Brighton School District and the Fort Lupton School District. I also have a master's degree in political science, public policy, and politics from the University of Colorado, Denver, and wrote my master's thesis on education reform in Colorado, specifically on SB191. So I am here to testify specifically in regards to the way the evaluation system works here in Colorado. And then in addition to that, I'm a nationally board certified teacher and I was the 2019 Colorado Civic Educator of the Year and the 2019 Street Law Educator of the Year, along with being an affiliate faculty member at the Metropolitan State University of Denver in the Journalism and Media Production Department. And so one of the reasons that I wanted to speak today has to do with the fact that we are consistently looking for a magic bullet to fix public education. And that's not just in Colorado, that's across the country. And SB 191 was designed to be one of those things. And the evaluation system that we set up had to do with that. And so originally when it was passed, it had to do with trying to seek out race to the top money, which that chip has long since sailed in the way this bill was designed. And so when we start talking about things that need to be adjusted, and we should take a look at things that need to be adjusted, We should not sacrifice good for perfect. Is this going to be a perfect solution? No. Is it good? Yes. And it is better. And so when we start taking a look, one of the things to take a look at is that since 2009, the number of students that have enrolled in public education in Colorado has increased by about 10%. The number of teachers who are working in public education in Colorado has increased by about 8%. The number of administrators that we have working in education in Colorado has increased by 24%. percent. And that's pretty obvious that the reason for that has a lot to do with the evaluation system. And so when we start taking a look, if the goal of our evaluation system is to produce and evaluate whether or not we have effective teachers in Colorado and whether or not we are taking a look at accountability for educators, then let's have that conversation and having an evaluation system that is continuously ongoing. I took a look at how long, there was a March 2011 study that was done by the Colorado Council on Educator Effectiveness about how long educators or principals were spending doing evaluations. And the answer was 7.5 hours per educator. And so the assumption was that that number was going to triple because we were every three years for non-probationary teachers and turned into every year. And so when we started taking a look at how much time I did bring as a teacher, visual aids for you. These are my evaluations since being at Overland High School. And so I wanted to make sure that you all have the opportunity to ask me questions in regards to what this looks like, what the evaluation system looks like, and how many hours it actually takes to go through the system. Thank you so much for your time, and I'm looking forward to your questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. I have a script, I promise, but I'm going to take a minute or two before I dive into the script. Representative Phillips, I know the answer to your questions. Representative Gilchrist, I went to East High School also. Go Angels. Representative Hartzik, thank you for your service. Representative Lori Garcia Sander, I know the answer to your question about portability. My name is Brandon Schaefer. I am an employee of the St. Varian Valley School District. I'm here representing St. Varian Valley, and I support House Bill 1291. I helped draft this bill. I was there. I feel a little bit like the play Hamilton. I was there when it happened, right? Is that the quote wrong? Sorry about that. this bill isn't about a three year evaluation cycle there's been a lot of really good testimony to what the positives or the negatives but that's not fundamentally what this bill was ever conceived as this bill is fundamentally about local control if you look at the language of the bill it says that non-probationary teachers must be evaluated at least once every three academic years. At least once every three academic years. That means that a local school board can choose whether they evaluate every year, every two years, or every three years. They get to choose. And that is the heart of the entire bill, is you get local school districts the ability to have that flexibility to figure out what's in the best interest of their local district and their local schools. What's kind of fun is we have a pilot program, if you want to call it that. It's not really a pilot program, not in an official way, where we're experimenting with that system or a system similar to that, where local school districts choose, right, yet have discretion, right now. Because if you're a charter school in the state, as part of your application to be a charter, you have to submit an evaluation plan, Plan for how you going to evaluate your teachers you submit that to your authorizer Which is the local school board in most cases The local school board decides whether or not to approve that What ironic in this conversation is that we trust the local school board to make that decision for charter schools, but we don't trust the local school board to make those decisions for their own schools. right so that's a little twist on the conversation that we've had we've heard a lot of reasons why you should why you shouldn't and those are all great conversations for a local school board to consider thank you welcome thanks madam chair thanks to all of you and hello my name is Liz Waddick I am a 20 Spanish teacher from Summit and I represent the 40,000 educators of the Colorado Education Association. I also wrote a whole script that I'm probably just going to talk to you about after listening to the whole entire day and I know that you have had a long day. I want to talk about the, it was interesting when Mr. Haddad, I think he said Haddad and I keep trying to say his name correctly but I'm going to work on it. When he talked about prioritizing time, that was like the nail on the head of all that I had written. I think about my whole career, and if you've been in education and you sat in this room today, you probably went through your whole career in it, listening to everyone and thinking about what happened in this evaluation and that evaluation. and where are my paper evaluations from Orchard Farm School District in St. Louis in 2004? And just really starting to think about those evals and thinking about how we spend our time. And the conversations that I had with effective principals often talked about where we differed in the evaluation. And that was great. I start to think about my own career or my own career as a student. And I go back to the Chicago Public Schools and Klisseld School with Dr. Bayer. He was my principal. And he knew my name. He knew my cousin Maggie. He knew her name. He knew who our parents were. He said hello to us. And that school was huge. It was three-story. It was huge on the south side of Chicago. And he knew all our names. He had the time. He bopped into classrooms and he talked to us. I mean, I know him. I can hear him. I can hear him talk. I know exactly how he talked. He was enormous. He's so tall. And I know just how he talked. And then I think, you know, through my career as an educator, how busy, how unbelievably busy our principals are. busy. I don't know what all the paperwork that it entails. None of them are putting their feet up. And for someone who has argued with them about plenty, right? As a union president, I have argued plenty. None of them have their feet up. They are working, but they're not bopping around those hallways. They're not saying hello to all the students. I don't know how they would remember everyone's names. And I think the same thing happens with our educators. We get tripped up trying to check boxes. I'm preparing canned lessons. It's way cooler when a principal bops in on a cool part of my lesson that I didn know that they were coming in for That cool That why I support 1291 I want those principals to have that time and I want the educators have it too thank you questions for this panel of witnesses story thank you madam chair thanks to all of you for being here like to

with all the work that you've done and focused on evaluations, are there successful models of evaluation that may provide better data on teacher effectiveness? And if so, if applied with this change in frequency of evaluation, what might we expect? Yeah. Ms. Jones-Waike. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things is when we take a look at both national and international standards in regards to educator effectiveness, the countries that actually stand out are usually Scandinavian countries, places like Finland, Sweden, things like that. And so I've done quite a bit of studying in regards to both countries as to how do they evaluate their educators and then also how do they then maintain the standards that they have in all of the international assessments and things like that. And one of those is that the way in which they create their evaluation system is much more of a system that allows for collaboration between evaluators and for educators. And so they will have administrators, sometimes they're referred to as deans, depending on where you are, come in, observe a class. They get to spend some time and then they will sit down and reflect on what teachers have done, what else they need to do. And teachers actually get to be self-reflective as well. The things that they need to improve on, the things that they see within their students. And those conversations are the things that really improve student outcomes. They're the things that improve and increase educator effectiveness. And they also increase educator retention, where people stay in education. And so those are the types of things that we could see as we start moving forward. And I realize, and Representative Phillips, you've asked this question about, like, why are we not legislating those things? And I hear what you're saying as far as, like, why can't you all add those things in? And obviously, you're all free to do so because that's what you get to do. But one of the things about the more legislation that comes down, the more top down, the less teachers get in the school districts that they are in that they really need. Because Colorado has 179 school districts and all of them have individual needs. And I've taught in rural school districts and I've obviously taught in urban school districts. and it does matter where you are as to how big your district is, how many resources you have, things like that. And so if you, when you start looking at what things are going to be mandated by the state legislature, that gets really hard. If you're in a rural district with only one high school, which I've done, um, versus where I am now, you know, the more that gets mandated by the state, the harder it is for those things to get done. Um, whereas I could spend a lot more of my time really doing things. And I will tell you that there's a lot of things that I do that have nothing to do with my evaluation. I go present at conferences. There's a lot of things that happen. I go observe other teachers. I would love to have more time to do that. I would love to have more time for them to come to my room and for me to go to theirs and for me to collaborate with my colleagues And I don have that It not that I would spend less time being a teacher I would get to spend more time doing the things that actually improve the practice that I have, because that's what it is. It's a professional practice. So. Good story. Thank you, Madam Chair. Honorable Brandon Schaefer, thank you for being here.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. So, Representative Phillips, you talked a little bit about not being prescriptive at that one section, saying that in the interim you may do the following things, that type of thing. we put that in there not to give the school the authority to do it but rather so that a teacher who's on a three year cycle couldn't refuse an observation when they're in between so teacher couldn't say I'm on a three year cycle you're not allowed to come into my classroom and do an informal evaluation of me so we put that very loose language because we don't know exactly what that might look like from school district to school district. And we wanted to make it clear that that was absolutely authorized and encouraged under this. Again, within the confines of local control, because that really was the focus, the intention of the bill when we started. There was a question about portability and how that would work. if a teacher were to transfer in, and how do you know that they're, you know, if they evaluated them one way. First of all, in general in portability, we tried very hard not to disrupt the current state of affairs with portability because that becomes very controversial when you do open that. We did, however, and I think this is actually in the amendment, but we put a provision in the amendment that says that a receiving district receive a teacher who transfers in, may, at their discretion, again, local control, place that teacher on the first year of the cycle. Even if the district has a three-year cycle, you can start them out on the first year of their three-year cycle as soon as they join the new school district. We do that so that the new school district can create a baseline on that teacher in the first year that they transfer in. I had a thought about fiscal note. This is more to your concerns that you expressed early, Representative Martinez. Yeah, it's a big fiscal note. There's no way around that, right? Just a bigger, bigger idea. Sometimes you get, you know, golden handcuffs. You marry a system, and then you want to make a little change to that system, and you get this great big fiscal note because you have to do programming changes, what I'd encourage you to do is don't let the tail wag the dog. The tail is the programmer. They shouldn't be telling you how to do public policy down here. If there's really a will to do this, we'll figure out a way. My ask to you and the rest of the members of the committee is, let us have that conversation with the Appropriations Committee vote us out today. Let us sit in front of the Appropriations Committee and see if we can find a way. to address the fiscal note and not make your decision on that basis here today.

Mr. Schaefer. Thank you, Madam Chair. And you're right. You know, I get it. I absolutely get it. And, you know, you've got to know two things. One, I was Senate president in the middle of the Great Recession. So I was on that side and in your shoes. I totally get it. Two, what is it we're talking about, Senate Bill 10-191? I was a Senate president in 2010 also. I've seen this from start to finish, right? Totally get it. And even when I was Senate president, I would tell people financial conversations need to play out in Appropriations Committee. And that's my only request here today. Let us have that conversation in Appropriations. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Rep Hamrick. Thank you, Madam Chair. I've already explained the amendment, so I'm just going to go ahead and move it. I move Amendment L001 to House Bill 26-1291. Second.

Are there any questions on L1 Rep. Stewart?

Okay.

Rep Hamrick. Thanks for the question. Yeah any teacher that transfers to another district is subject to being put on the formal evaluation.

Okay. Rep Stewart. Thank you Madam Chair. My second

Rep Goldstein. Thank you for that question. That's part of the negotiation process. When SB 191 went into effect in Adams 12, we had to revamp a big chunk of an article just to accommodate SB 191. So that's up to the district and their teachers association to negotiate that.

Rep. Hamrick. Yeah, absolutely. And it's documented and substantiated performance deficiencies.

And the administration is considered an arm of the board when it comes to that. They can decide that they want to do that. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Representative Hamrick. Thanks so much, Madam Chair and committee members. I want to thank you for your time, and I also want to thank all those who testified today, including, if you're counting, two superintendents, two assistant superintendents, two former representatives, and a former president of the Senate, and representatives from CASE, CASB, Rural, CEA, AFT, PTA, AAUW, and COIAC, teachers and students. Senate Bill 191, when it was first passed, was one of the biggest unfunded mandates that we've ever seen to districts. Our bill would decrease the costs for districts, allowing them to truly serve their teachers and their students. We often talk about the teacher pipeline as a series of numbers, but for our students, that pipeline is the difference between a revolving door of substitutes and a stable, inspiring mentor who knows their name and their needs. By passing this bill and its amendment, we're choosing to protect our most proven assets, the veteran educators whose effectiveness is not a question, but a longstanding stable fact, and the new educators that are coming to the system with lots of support. We're acknowledging that an effective teacher's growth doesn't happen on a compliance form. It happens when they have time to mentor a novice, the space to innovate in their classroom, and the professional dignity to be treated as an expert. Also, it is a very strategic use of time, as was already spoken about. Formally evaluating teachers each year has not moved the needle nationally or in our state. In fact, 29 states in our country have stopped evaluating teachers every year. 29 states have stopped evaluating teachers every year. This bill is not stopping evaluation. This is creating a continuous improvement model versus a compliance mechanism in which teachers start over every year. Imagine the growth of a non-probationary teacher that happens when teaching and learning cycles are truly discussed on a continuous basis over the course of three years, rather than filling in checkboxes for compliance reasons. Growth is continuous conversations between the teacher and the evaluator, not a compliance-driven measure. We need to move beyond micromanagement and view teachers as professionals so that they can best serve their students I urge an aye vote on House Bill 1291 as amended Rob Goldstein Thank you, Madam Chair.

Rep Hamrick.

Rep Hamrick. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move House Bill 26-1291 as amended to the Committee on Appropriations with a favorable recommendation.

Okay. Closing comments from the committee. Go ahead and raise your hand if you do have closing comments. Okay. So we will start with Rep Garcia-Sander.

rep story thank you madam chair thanks first of all to the bill sponsors who are bringing this bill and also to all the witnesses that came forward today it's been a very robust conversation as we get into the evening. So I feel many witnesses were very clear today that the evaluation requirements, educator evaluation requirements since 2010, including Senate Bill 70 in 2022, consumes time without much return on investment, and that mentoring teachers, training teacher leaders, peer-on-peer collaboration, and many other facets are key to teacher effectiveness and strategic investment in educator support. And you can feel it in the room when they're talking. They're incredibly passionate people, and I think it's important that we listen to that. I also want to share a couple of experiences that I'm aware of. I want to say it was in the summer of 21. When I was in the Senate, I did a school tour around the state in Colorado, focused on the educator evaluation system. And I want to say I visited somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 schools. And, you know, there were some on the eastern plains, there were some further south, Colorado Springs and Fountain, we did western slope, we did several school districts here in the metro area, large school districts, small school districts, in between size school districts and to just sit down with educators and school administrators, counselors, whoever we could meet with. And it was incredibly informative. There were many people that willingly stayed after school to sit down and meet with me. and we recorded the conversations and we analyzed them and we put comments in categories and all kinds of things, but they too were incredibly passionate people and I can't tell you how many educators sat in the room with or without their colleagues, not just a few tears, but bawling, just really, really disturbed about the immense pressure that this evaluation system has and how it negatively impacts their ability to teach students what they believe is important because there's just not, the time is taken up so much with focusing on collecting artifacts and being able to prove every point on RANDA and being able to check all those boxes just to get to an effective level let alone highly effective And so that was very impactful And then also a long time before I was a legislator I want to say it was like in this, I don't know, maybe around 2009, 10, something like that, maybe earlier, maybe around 2005. I was very involved with Jeffco schools, and Jeffco was selected among a number of school districts across the country, maybe 15 or 18, maybe it was 20 or 30. I don't remember how many, but Jeffco was one that was selected for this TIF grant, the Teacher Incentive Fund Grant. and it was a really big deal to get selected and it was a five-year study where there was a group of control schools, I think there were 10 of them, and a group of testing schools for the research, also 10 schools in the district and then this was going on across the country and this program, this grant, provided all kinds of additional educator supports that schools didn't have to both, both control and the test subjects. So they had like a master teacher in each of the schools. They had teacher leaders, you know, a couple of those in each of the schools. They had teacher mentors that were assigned. They worked a lot with the educators in the classrooms. They set up peer observations. There was just a huge, huge shift and change in how teachers were being engaged in a whole different system. So all these schools had to agree to do all these things. But the teachers that were the research group, the 10 research schools, they would get a monetary incentive if student test scores improved. And the control didn't get that. But all of them got the teacher supports. and so the whole idea was to see if getting a monetary incentive would improve student outcomes and so the first year of that every year they at the end of the year a selection of teachers from both the control and the testing schools would come to the board and deliver a presentation about how things were going. And I can tell you the first year, there were a lot of tears also in that room that night about how hard this was, how challenging it was, how they wanted to quit, that it was just such a huge change and culture change in how they taught to have people coming into their classroom constantly, sitting in a room with a whole bunch of teachers that they weren't terribly familiar with, but then their own colleagues and everybody that was there had been in to observe this teacher at some point in the previous week and whatever, and they would talk about what this teacher did well and not so well, and, you know, that was just a little threatening, you know, to have this going on. But anyway, that first year was tough. The second year, they're like okay we getting used to it and it getting a little better but by the time they got to the end of the fifth year everybody that came in to talk to the board was talking about how great this program was how they loved it how they were much better teachers because of it, how they didn't want to ever leave the profession, they never wanted to leave that school. They just loved, loved, loved having all this opportunity for peer collaboration, for peer mentoring, for peer observations, for just the immense amount of teamwork that went into it. And it didn't freaking matter if they got the money. They didn't care about the money. All the student scores went up. But the student, the teachers that got the incentive, they did not go higher. It was all about this extra opportunity to work and collaborate together. And I think that's what we've been hearing from many of the witnesses today, that that's what matters. It's not an evaluation system that takes five hours, seven hours, 12 hours to work on, whether you're an educator or a principal. It's not that that makes teachers better. It's this investment of providing time to be utilized in a different way. And I think that's incredibly important. And I also find it really curious that today, among our witnesses, the nonpartisan policy organizations who came before us do not represent entities that work within the schools. They are policy orgs that they are opposed to this bill. And yet the witnesses that came before us that represent the educators, the administrators, the school board members, the parents, individuals that are teachers, the people who actually work within the system are crying out and really want to see this change. And I think it's important that we listen to them and value what they're asking for. After 16 years of this evaluation system that's in place, that is not providing any return on investment, but instead is stealing time that could be better used in so many other ways that would better improve performance, teacher effectiveness, student outcomes. And I think we are way overdue for a change, and I will be a very enthusiastic guest. Amel Bacon. Thank you.

Rip Gilchrist. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I just wanted to talk I again really appreciate the intention of the bill And for so many folks that came and testified this was a really robust policy discussion and that is why we here And appreciate all the answers to questions, both from the pose and support panels, and appreciate how much has gone into the work by the sponsors. I am going to be a no today, I think, for a few things. Number one, I think I'm still concerned about the trigger that we discussed in the amendment phase, being that it is triggered by a teacher or a local board, and that doesn't seem clear in the language that the administration is an arm of that board, so I would want clarity there. I think the fiscal note is really concerning. I was chatting with our JBC staff and members today as they heard from families of kids with intellectual disabilities and their programs getting cut. And I just think to adjust a policy in a way that creates cost that's that large, even if it's a couple years away, feels not the right choice in our current budget situation. And then I also think in I just have significant reservations about adjusting a policy that we put into place that has not been fully implemented. And I don't think this fully this plugs into that. It feels like we are sort of going back and instead of working with the data that will come from that bill and inform future decisions. I also just want to echo what AML Bacon just mentioned about the data and transparency and ensuring that we have answers for student growth data and how that will be incorporated or averaged. I just think that is so critical and continues to sort of center us in students. And I do think that I really believe evaluation is a recognition of professionalism, that professions, you know, we should be evaluated in our profession. We should be held accountable and we should welcome that accountability. And I think a lot of teachers do. And I think that there are ways that we can fix the administrative burden. and I think I hear that and we heard that today, but I just don't know if this is the answer given that the train is moving and we're trying to fix things. So I think that's really important. And I think maybe I'll just end with, I've said this before, but I have three kids in elementary education, in public elementary education. I deeply value their teachers. I think someone said earlier that we have the day to share the hours you spend with your kid or end up being equal to what teachers spend. And I, like that warmed my heart because I view our teachers as our partners in everything we do, especially with two kids who are, have really significant needs and we would be lost without them. And I grateful that we have that partnership and every kid deserves that partnership And I think we have to make sure that we are creating a system where that professionalism is evaluated and that partnership is maintained. And so I do think, and I don't want to speak for all my colleagues, but I think to me saying no to this is not saying no to teachers. It is saying that I don't know if this is the right path, and I am committed to continuing that conversation because I value our partners so much. So thank you again for your work on this, and respect it and appreciate it.

Vice Chair Martinez. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Bill Sponsors, for bringing this up. I didn't know what to expect today coming into the committee hearing. And, you know, like who was going to testify, you know, how the conversation is going to be framed. And there were a couple of things that stuck out to me today was, first of all, was like, again, like this, you know, talking about the burden argument, right? Like, you know, saying this is this frees up time for the teachers so that that way they can better allot that. And it's resource management. And that's kind of what stuck with me on this. And, you know, because you can you can nickel and dime kind of everything else. And like, well, it's two hours here, five hours here, you know, six hours. But I think, you know, that that's the piece that really stuck with me is the resource management bit. And where do we want our teachers spending their time? And is it effective? And I think what I heard loud and clear today was that the current system is not working. It is not benefiting the teachers. It sounds like, you know, the administrators have had issues with this. And so then I asked myself, okay, taking a step back into what I did previously before I was here. So I guess first of all, in the Marine Corps, I was always taught don't expect inspect. And two, I took that in when I was an administrator in higher education. Higher education, K-12, I know is different, but I put myself in these same shoes. How can we get the feedback that we need to be able to make improvements to the program and to the teachers that we need to be able to have a positive impact? and with this, you know, I've had to do these things. I'm an adjunct instructor myself and having to go through all of these evaluations every year. I'll be honest, when I was in that role, evaluation time was a very difficult time for me. I didn't like it because you're always wondering, okay, how can you thread the needle to making sure that they're getting the accurate feedback that they need and still being able to without like absolutely having, you know, a blow up when, when, you know, if things don't go, go well. Right. And I did that with all of my professional staff and my adjunct instructors every single year. And I did that to make sure that we, we did it. It took a lot of time and a lot of effort. Now, granted, does everybody evaluate how I did? No. Is, is the way I evaluated perfect? Absolutely not. There's definitely room for improvement. But that being said, I think looking at, at this through that, that lens, that what I got told today and what I heard loud and clear today was the system isn't working. And based off of how this is looking and what the bill content is, is that taking it from a one year to a three year doesn't solve that problem. And because you're still left with the same system that isn't working and still is going through the same problems that everybody brought up today, is that you're still having to invest time. You're still having to go through this bit and that the data points still aren't necessarily there. So I don't feel like that solves that problem. Now, I think what is clear is that evaluation piece of how we're doing this and is it effective and making those adjustments, I think is 100% necessary based off of what we heard today across the board. I think that message was consistent. So the other piece to me too is that, you know, I know normally, you know, we're just looking at the policy piece, but the part that's really sticking with me or another part that's sticking with me is on the fiscal note piece. Like, believe me, I have had my fair share of problems went and in contestation with fiscal notes and where you want to push back and where you feel it's not fair or just but to find an additional four hundred and eighty thousand dollars or you know and that could fluctuate up or down for next year's budget like i i will echo what my colleagues are saying i mean in in just the supplemental request we're having to debate or cut hours for at-home health care providers for kids with disabilities. That's the reality of the situation. Those aren't good cuts. We made, I guess, there's no good cuts, I guess, at all. But, I mean, these are going to be very difficult decisions. And to find an additional half a million dollars in next year's budget, that's tying those hands in that situation when we already know we're not looking at a good situation. So with all of that, you know, I think I'm committed to helping, working, you know, and trying to find a solution to this issue and making sure that we are supporting our teachers and making sure that what we're actually doing is effective. But based off of what I had or you know what I said already I just can get there with this legislation today Okay

Representatives Bacon. Very respectful no for today.

Flannell. Respectfully no.

Gilchrist. No.

Hartsook? No.

Phillips? Yes.

Story? Yes.

Madam Chair?

The motion fails 3 to 10. Vice Chair Martinez?

Is there a second?

Seconded by AML Bacon. Is there any opposition to the motion? Seeing none, House Bill 1291 is postponed indefinitely by reversal of the roll call. And the Education Committee is adjourned.