When Colorado schools don’t do a good job educating certain groups of students — like students of color or those learning English — state education officials can suggest ways to improve student performance and help districts find funding for new programs and training.
But Colorado largely leaves it up to school districts to choose their approach — and it doesn’t levy the same consequences on these schools as it does for those that are deemed low-performing under its state accountability system.
This hands-off approach leaves students at risk, according to a new report from the Collaborative for Student Success and HCM Strategies that examined how states are implementing their plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal education law that replaced No Child Left Behind.
The law requires every state to have a plan that lays out how it will measure student achievement and what it will do to improve performance among groups of students who aren’t meeting academic goals. That system uses different criteria and different interventions than the state system, a disconnect that the report said undermines efforts to improve schools so that they serve all students.
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