Yesterday StudentsFirst released its State Policy Report Card for 2013 to “reveal more about what states are doing to improve the nation’s public education system so that it serves all students well and puts each and every one of them on a path toward success.” StudentsFirst gave each state an overall grade based on three criteria; elevating the teaching profession, empowering parents, and spending wisely and governing well. You can see the results for all states here.
Colorado earned just a C- overall with a B- in elevating teaching, an F in empowering parents, and a C in spending wisely and governing well (read more here). Although the organization credits Colorado as a national leader in elevating the teaching profession by adopting meaningful teacher evaluations and requiring those evaluations to be used in personnel decisions, including tenure and dismissal, it still has some work to do. Currently, Colorado does not make teacher effectiveness the “primary driver” in compensation decisions. The state needs to take this next step both to earn a higher grade and to better serve its students.
The state earned a horrible grade in empowering parents. Although Colorado is certainly a pro-school choice state, according to StudentsFirst it does not do enough to provide parents with meaningful information on schools’ academic and fiscal performance. And while there are many charter schools in the Denver-metro area, high-performing public charters need to be accessible to more students across the state.
As far as spending wisely and governing well, there is also a lot of room for improvement. StudentsFirst suggests that the state would be more successful in turning around low-performing schools faster if it established a state and local authority to intervene. The state also needs to hold school boards accountable for how they effectively they are spending when it comes to student outcomes.
Although Colorado clearly has a lot of improvements to make in its education policies to better serve its students, it actually ranked in the top ten among all 50 states and the District of Columbia. No state received an A and only two states, Louisiana and Florida, earned a B. Most states received a D and 11 states received an F.
Overall these results are quite disappointing, but it demonstrates how greatly needed education reform is in this country. Kudos to StudentsFirst for their hard work in putting this information together and exposing the unfortunate state of our country’s current public education system. We can only hope that policymakers and education leaders will put this report to good use.
The state earned a horrible grade in empowering parents. Although Colorado is certainly a pro-school choice state, according to StudentsFirst it does not do enough to provide parents with meaningful information on schools’ academic and fiscal performance. And while there are many charter schools in the Denver-metro area, high-performing public charters need to be accessible to more students across the state.
As far as spending wisely and governing well, there is also a lot of room for improvement. StudentsFirst suggests that the state would be more successful in turning around low-performing schools faster if it established a state and local authority to intervene. The state also needs to hold school boards accountable for how they effectively they are spending when it comes to student outcomes.
Although Colorado clearly has a lot of improvements to make in its education policies to better serve its students, it actually ranked in the top ten among all 50 states and the District of Columbia. No state received an A and only two states, Louisiana and Florida, earned a B. Most states received a D and 11 states received an F.
Overall these results are quite disappointing, but it demonstrates how greatly needed education reform is in this country. Kudos to StudentsFirst for their hard work in putting this information together and exposing the unfortunate state of our country’s current public education system. We can only hope that policymakers and education leaders will put this report to good use.
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