A bill making its way through the Colorado legislature with bipartisan support would lend financial and logistical support to these efforts and encourage other districts and charter schools to undertake their own experiments. The bill also calls for annual reporting and an annual meeting of the participating districts and schools to learn from each other and recommend potential changes in state rules or laws related to accountability. “It’s part of our culture as a state to innovate locally and then let the state as a whole benefit from that,” said Julie Oxenford O’Brian, director of the Center for Transforming Learning and Teaching at the University of Colorado Denver, pointing to the way Colorado measures student growth as one example. “It’s happening now, but what we haven’t had is a way for others to learn from what they’re doing.”
Beyond test scores: Colorado experiments create alternatives for rating schools