Community members weigh in on how to improve K-12 education system
Northeastern Colorado meeting part of statewide conversation
Colorado’s K-12 education system needs improving but what exactly should be done to improve it is a difficult question to answer. It’s a question that a select group of 16 local education and government officials and community members pondered Wednesday at a virtual meeting held by Building a Better Colorado.
Formed in 2015, BBCO is a diverse, nonpartisan coalition of Coloradans with the shared belief that Colorado can do better than the divisive arguments that have come to dominate our political discourse. This year the organization is visiting 37 communities around the state to engage in conversation around improving Colorado’s K-12 education system.
“In public policy, you can’t continue to do the same thing and somehow magically expect something different to happen. If we want a different outcome from our state’s education system we have to be able to lean in, engage in a constructive dialogue, weigh the pros and cons of different pathways forward,” said Reeves Brown, an independent public policy consultant and project coordinator for BBCO who led the meeting.
To begin the meeting, he shared the history of K-12 education in Colorado, noting that over the last four decades as Colorado voters have pursued competing goals of lower taxes (Gallagher Amendment), smaller government (Taxpayer Bill of Rights or TABOR) and sustained funding for K-12 (Amendment 23), two trends in education funding have developed.
First, the state has had to assume a larger share of the responsibility for funding K-12 education. In 1989 the state was responsible for 43% of the funding and local government paid 57% but as of 2020, the state is now responsible for 58% of the funding. That increased responsibility on the state to fund K-12 has contributed to forcing reductions in funding for other programs such as higher education, for which the state has reduced its support by 50% since 2000.
The second trend is that fund
ing per pupil in Colorado has continued to drop relative to the national average, from $232 above the national average in 1985 to about $2,500 below the national average in 2018. However, Colorado’s annual per pupil investment continues to grow in nominal dollars as a result of Amendment 23’s mandate to grow base per pupil funding at the rate of inflation.
Because of Colorado’s higher wealth compared to other states (measured by Gross State Product per capita), Colorado ranked 44th among all states in terms of relative “effort” in funding preschool through 12th grade education in 2018.
Colorado’s rural school districts have been more adversely impacted because the Gallagher Amendment has eroded rural tax bases more and the per pupil funding for those districts is reduced more by the Budget Stabilization Factor, a tool introduced by the state legislature in 2010 when, in response to the Great Recession, the state chose to no longer apply Amendment 23’s funding mandate to the additional “factor” funding which addressed school disparity.
The budget stabilization factor has since resulted in a reduction in annual K-12 funding by about $700-$900 million annually.
After reviewing the history of K-12 education, meeting participants were split up into groups and asked to discuss three challenges in education and how those challenges might be addressed, the first being improving teacher effectiveness.
In a 2016 national study of factors contributing to K-12 teacher shortages, Colorado ranked 48th in overall “teaching attractiveness.” Part of the reason for that is because Colorado teachers’ salaries are about 10% below the national average; in fact, Colorado ranks 50th in teacher wage competitiveness based on a study by Rutgers Education Law Center which compares teachers to non-teachers with similar education, experience and hours worked.
There is a shortage of K-12 teachers in Colorado — approximately 235 (3.40%) teaching vacancies remained unfilled for the entire school year in 2020-21 and almost 13% were filled with emergency “shortage mechanisms.” The shortage is particularly evident in rural school districts, as “small rural” districts (under 1,000 students) realized over twice as many teacher vacancies per 100 students as “non-rural” school districts.
All of the meeting participants agreed that something needs to be done to try to improve teacher effectiveness. The most popular of the strategies offered was to develop a more robust and effective residency model to prepare teachers for the classroom, both through traditional higher education degrees and alternative teacher licensure programs. That was followed by developing a “Master Teacher” designation (national board certification) to establish a top band of exemplar teachers who can provide mentoring for teachers in residency; providing districts with discretionary block grants to improve teachers’ work conditions; and reducing the cost to become a teacher through loan forgiveness and subsidized housing.
The next challenge that meeting participants were asked to discuss is improving student outcomes. While student scores on the Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) performance test have been trending slightly higher, only one-third of students meet or exceed academic expectations, and Colorado ranks 40th in SAT scores compared to all other states.
Of the strategies offered to try to address this challenge, the most popular was to provide more high school education options that allow for the development of employable skills without a four-year college degree, including Career & Technical Education (CTE) and apprenticeships, and contribute towards a pathway for a post-secondary degree if ever desired. That was followed by changing how the state measures the performance of its education system to better measure the potential of individual students and investing in providing additional tutoring opportunities for students, with a priority emphasis on students from low-income households.
The final challenge meeting participants were asked to discuss was improving funding equity.
Everyone agreed that all kids in Colorado – regardless of demographic differences such as ZIP code, family income, and ethnicity – should have equal access to an education that allows them to succeed and when asked what share of the local/state K-12 funding partnership should the state contribute the majority said 60% (the current state contribution).
Over 70% of participants either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that all Colorado taxpayers should contribute to an equal effort to fund the state’s k-12 education relative to their own property values, even if this means that districts with more property wealth wind up subsidizing the education cost for districts with less property wealth. The majority also strongly agreed that local taxpayers should be allowed to invest additional local funds into their school district – beyond what’s required to provide a basic quality K-12 education – to create for their students a better, and therefore unequal, education opportunity.
When asked what they believe is the higher priority for Colorado to pursue, the majority said improving teacher effectiveness and improving student outcomes while some said more equitable funding should be the priority. Also, the majority strongly or somewhat agreed that Colorado should pursue major systemic changes in our state’s education system to improve teacher effectiveness, student outcomes, and equitable funding.
Once BBCO has concluded all 37 of its community meetings they will be hosting a citizens assembly with representatives from each community meeting to review the data from all 37 meetings and continue the discussion.
To learn more about BBCO and Colorado’s K-12 education system, go to www.buildingabettercolorado.org.