August 11, 2016
One person’s listening tour – from that “other”
Colorado: rural school districts
Can
you hear me now?
See page 5 for comments from rural districts during
the Listening Tour.
|
This
spring the Colorado Department of Education conducted its Listening Tour “to
solicit feedback from the community regarding key provisions of the new law,”
Every Student Succeeds Act. CDE has compiled well over 100 pages of comments from
those of us who attended one of the 14 meetings around the state[1]. It created a committee of 20 “to develop
a first draft of the state plan”; they held their first meeting this week. The goal: to submit a Colorado ESSA plan “to
the State Board of Education and governor for approval before being delivered
to the U.S. Department of Education,” a plan “that
is clearly understood and can be supported by all.” (http://www.cde.state.co.us/fedprograms/ESSABlogPosts/statewidelisteningtour).
Are we hearing from the MAJORITY of
Colorado school districts – i.e., the rural voice?
It is hard to listen to all the
voices in Colorado, not so much because of our population size, 22nd
in the country, but because of our geography.
We are a big state: 8th largest in the country. No small task, to hear what those far-away
voices—in rural Colorado—want to tell those setting policy in Denver.
Any educator who spent most of
his life in New England—I lived or worked in five of the six states—is still amazed
at the size of Colorado. Those six New
England states cover a total of 71,992 square miles. The Centennial state alone—103,718 square
miles—makes my “home region” look mighty small.
As a student or teacher in over
10 New England schools, I gave little thought to rural versus urban schools. I never lived more than 2 ½ hours from the
state capital any of those states. The
notion of “a rural perspective” on schools, as distinct from the pressing
concerns in urban districts, well—let’s just say Vermonters would find that
idea laughable.
But it is
real here. MOST Colorado school districts are rural; MOST enroll under 1,000
students. Of late I have listened to
several leaders from rural districts share their insights. I summarize what I
have heard—their views, not mine. And of course, not meant to be representative
of communities as diverse as Cortez, Holly, and Wray. Still, perspectives that I hope are given
their due as we develop our new state plan.[2]
To begin, a few “Rural Facts” from the Rural Education Council Fact
Sheet:[3]
·
178 school districts (total)
·
109 of the 178 are small rural
·
38 of the 178 are rural districts
·
Approximately 130,500 rural students
·
14 districts with less than 100 students
·
53 districts with less than 250 students
·
85 districts with less than 500 students
·
Approx. 60 districts are at one K-12 site and/or one K-12 building
What I heard
Recruiting
and retaining teachers
The Colorado Department of
Higher Education reported a recent drop, from 3,700 to 2,500 (a 25% decline in
just 4-5 years), of those completing teacher education programs. But location matters.
1) If Denver hires 1,300 teachers each year,
that’s going to be large percentage of the new teachers being trained from
Colorado universities.
2) If Cherry Creek sees a 30% drop in would-be
teachers, it will still get over 100 people applying for a position, so it
won’t have a huge impact there. But in our small rural districts we are often
lucky to have a handful of applicants for certain jobs. When we see fewer teachers going into
teaching in our state–and expect a large number of older teachers will soon
retire, we wonder—in five years, where are we going to find high quality
teachers for our rural schools? Especially (see below) when the pay is $26,000
and you qualify for food stamps?
(See Colorado Public Radio’s
powerful story, “A Colorado
Teacher Shortage Puts Rural Schools On The Brink Of Crisis.” Excerpts, Addendum B.)
Rural
Colorado
Overall Cost of Living:
9% above national average
Average Overall Cost of Living in CO: 7% above national average Category w/ Highest Index: Healthcare (26% above national average) Annual Cost for a Single Adult with No Children: $31,576 Annual Cost for a Married Couple with One Child: $61,713 Annual Cost for a Married Couple with Four Children: $89,916 |
Cost
of living in rural Colorado
Do policymakers in Denver
believe that it is easy to live on less in the small towns around the
state? Consider the evidence—see box—that
it is not cheaper to live far from
the big city.
Teacher
salaries
Last winter the Colorado
Legislative Council produced an analysis of the Cost of Living (COL), for each
school district (Feb. 2016 - https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/sites/default/files/2015%20Cost%20of%20Living%20Study%20-%20Pacey%20Economics.pdf).
In July, at the CASE Rural Pre-Conference, Elizabeth Superintendent
Douglas Bissonette presented a study comparing the average teacher salary in
2015-16 with the COL—in each district. In 14 rural districts the average teacher
salary (less than $32,000) was $15,000 less than the cost of living (say
$47,000 or above) in that community. In 60 rural districts the gap between the average
salary and the Cost of Living is over $10,000.
5
examples from “lowest 100” – from lowest average salaries in the state, on up
#
|
County
|
School district
|
Total FTE
|
Average
Salary
|
2015 COL
|
Amount -/+
COL
|
Percent -/+
COL
|
3
|
Washington
|
OTIS R-3
|
24.8
|
$27,814
|
$47,021
|
-$19,207
|
-40.85%
|
22
|
Kit Carson
|
BURLINGTON RE-6J
|
50.8
|
$34,623
|
$48,111
|
-$13,488
|
-28.03%
|
40
|
Custer
|
CUSTER CTY
|
32.1
|
$36,634
|
$50,216
|
-$13,582
|
-27.05%
|
76
|
Adams
|
BENNETT 29J
|
54.9
|
$38,884
|
$50,405
|
-$11,521
|
-22.86%
|
96
|
Grand
|
WEST GRAND 1-JT
|
36.9
|
$40,469
|
$52,751
|
-$12,282
|
-23.28%
|
That a teacher’s salary falls short of the
Cost of Living in his or her community is not a shock. When the average salary and the COL are both
between $47,000 and $50,000, as we see in districts like Academy 20, Brighton,
Greeley 6, Mapleton, and Platte Valley most will say: this is not a
crisis. But when the gap puts teachers
$15,000 below the cost of living? Or, far worse—puts many below the poverty level?
On a more hopeful note: One
district told me of teacher turnover, up to nearly 30% a couple of years ago, is
now down to 17%. Increasing pay –
offering a pay scale now ranges as high as $48,000 – gives younger teachers a
sense that their salary can grow well
above the previous maximum.
Colorado has good reason to assume education
funding will remain below the national average for years to come. Those of us in rural districts feel these
gaps; it makes us eager to focus our limited dollars on what is most important.
If attracting quality teachers into our classrooms–and keeping them—is near the
top of that list, is the chief “reform” in our state, SB 191, helping – or not?
Teacher
Evaluation and Education Effectiveness
Dissenting voices sometimes pose
the most fundamental questions, as when a rural leader asks: Is SB 191
achieving its goal of improving teaching?
Has the new law increased student success? (Let’s recall, those were among the bill’s stated
goals: feedback for educators “aimed at continuously improving their
performance and student results”; “opportunities for … professional development
and growth”; to “ensure effective teachers in every classroom…” (https://www.cde.state.co.us/educatoreffectiveness/sb191factsheet).
Yes, today we now have more well-articulated steps for evaluation, which
can play a meaningful role in rehiring, etc. –but at its heart, do the many hours
on the part of evaluators and teachers (compiling all they do to show the
district that they are fulfilling new requirements) improve classroom
instruction? Is checking off the 70
(count’em![4])
boxes to show proficiency efficient? Is
it meaningful?
Local control, freedom from regulations –
Rural Agility Project
Educators in
rural districts note how the state has responded positively to the charter
school movement – 12% of Colorado students attend charter schools; in Denver,
it’s over 18%. They see how charters
have used their waivers from state and district regulations to gain greater
control over the budget, curriculum, hiring—and much more. Some suggest, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, that
the freedom and local control of charters actually has its roots in the way
small towns have “owned” and advocated for their schools since Abraham Lincoln
entered the White House! In a comparison
of rural and charter schools, the Colorado Rural Schools Alliance stated: “The
school choice design imitates the culture and characteristics of Colorado’s small,
rural community schools.”[5]
Two years ago the Colorado
Association of School Boards initiated the Rural Agility Project—“Recovering Rural
Colorado’s Freedom to Govern Locally.”[6]
Rural communities continue to explore elements in waiver statutes, the
Innovation Schools Act, and the Charter Schools Act that might serve them well.
As the metro population grows and the number of folks representing rural
Colorado at the legislature declines, the perception persists that bills are
introduced and passed to tackle the issues faced, above all, by the bigger
districts. Without seeking to skirt
requirements to be accountable, rural schools boards seek to “recover the freedom to exert meaningful
local control” (Rural Agility Project).
Data collection (For examples of too
much paperwork see Mark Hillman’s opinion piece, next page,)
Leaders in rural districts examine
and use data, but are not afraid to ask:
·
Will collecting all this data be the avenue for
change? To what extent can we act on what the data tells us? What can
we do about it? Will it make for better school boards,
principals, teachers?
·
Do legislators and state department folks
acknowledge the amount of time and resources needed to carry out the new
policies that were put in place this past decade (e.g. SB 163–Accountability
Act; SB 191–Effective Educator Act; HB 1238–The READ Act), especially for small
districts staffed by only three or four people?
Too much paperwork: from Mark Hillman, former Colorado Senate
majority leader and state treasurer
“Data
collection strangling schools, especially small ones,” (The Denver Post), March 17, 2016
“One small school tabulated a list of 57 mandatory reports that must be
submitted regularly to state or federal agencies and another 63 reports that are
required to obtain funding for certain programs….
“Elementary schools are also grappling with Teaching
Strategies Gold, a data-collection behemoth intended to track the progress of
students. TS Gold demands that teachers instantaneously document the progress
of every student in 38 different categories using pictures or specific
examples.
“It’s common for our elementary teachers
to work late into the nights and on weekends just to keep up with required
reporting. In our local preschool, a staff of four teachers and aides reports
spending roughly 15 hours a week to document just 32 students.” http://www.denverpost.com/2016/03/17/data-collection-strangling-schools-especially-small-ones/
|
School
Performance Frameworks, ESSA, and adding other factors – a vote for simplicity
Everyone agrees Colorado’s
School Performance Framework (SPF) fails to tell the full story of a school,
and many are pleased the new federal law “requires that
states ... add at least one new indicator of school quality or student
success.” And yet rural leaders remind
us: there is no end to what else we could add. Consider the dashboard in your car: you get a
few key indicators. Not the full story, but it gives us the essentials. Policymakers may be trying to produce a
school report that gives the whole picture—as if that were possible! Let’s
accept that no SPF can be fully comprehensive. Less is more.
Funds
Part 1: resources, buildings, BEST – Do legislators understand how
unlikely it is for our districts to come up with a mill levy override? (See the
high percentage of rural districts where recent requests for a mill levy
override failed - https://www.cde.state.co.us/cdefinance/sfmilllevy.)
Without such overrides, do policymakers appreciate how hard it is to make rural
teacher salaries competitive with the metro area?
The Building Excellent Schools Today (BEST) funds for school
construction are great for small districts, and it was good to see the legislature
raise its commitment last spring. But BEST
cannot begin to address the size of the problem; in rural communities
throughout the state, far too many students attend inadequate facilities. It
would shock you to see the conditions in some of these buildings, over 100
years old, where there is no way these communities can raise the dollars needed
to rebuild….
Part 2: poverty, equity - Too many equate equity issues with urban
schools—only. There is another kind of poverty
in rural communities that might be invisible to policymakers in Denver. Low-income communities in the metro area have
access to resources unavailable in small towns. Hospitals, mental health centers,
museums, a host of nonprofits—so many opportunities for kids to play and learn
and find support …. Do policymakers
realize how the setting alone, in an impoverished rural community, can lead to
risk factors not accounted for by traditional measures? If the
kids in our rural schools are to have an equal shot at achieving their
potential, we need more resources.
The
media and “happy news” for rural schools
On May 11 Colorado Chalkbeat produced an article, “Legislative session ends
on hopeful note for rural schools.” One
rural leader dismissed the headline with a shrug, mocking it as “happy news.” A
bill to support 40 prospective teachers in rural districts? A drop in the
bucket. Another leader cheered the $2,800
stipend for these student teachers, but was convinced the teaching shortage will
only get worse. That same day, another
headline, from The Colorado Independent, more
accurately captured the mood of rural districts at the close of the session:
“Rural school funding axed in School Finance Act deal.”
Another View is a newsletter by Peter Huidekoper
Jr. Comments are welcome. 303-757-1225 -
peterhdkpr@gmail.com
Listening Tour: comments from rural districts (from
meetings in Durango, Limon, and Pueblo)
What supports and services can
CDE provide that would be helpful to districts with schools on improvement?
Come visit – spend time in rural
districts – come to understand our problems.
Other comments about quality
instruction & leadership and supports for student success:
It’s my understanding that there
are tribal consultations that are required. What is the plan for
that? Will these consultations actually take place on the Reservations
or through (Mr. X) in Denver? Keeping in mind that the two federally
recognized tribes in Colorado are in this room and not Denver. So while we
certainly want to include (him), it should be here, not there.
Other comments about standards,
assessments, and accountability:
Title III – how are we to implement change when small districts can’t
afford to even join a [consortium] since the funds we get far outweigh the cost
to manage?
from Durango meeting, May 12,
2016)
What supports and services can
CDE provide that would be helpful to districts with schools on improvement?
From the conversation today, it sounded as if there may be a need for a
rural school improvement network. With approximately 150 rural districts
serving about 15% of the student population, there are many unique needs of
these districts opposed to the front-range serving approximately 30 districts
and 85% of the student population.
What measures of school quality or student
success should be included in the school accountability system?
·
Going to college isn’t always the most
appropriate measure, especially for our rural communities.
·
If you’re going to compare, you’ve got to level
the playing field. Matching demographics matters. It should be left up to the
community. Nobody knows these communities better than we do. You don’t know the
problems we are dealing with, so leave it up to local control. Extra-curricular
activities (not athletics) participation would be a good alternative measure to
take into account. Our participation in our district is at like 92%.
How should the state consider
the 95% assessment participation requirement?
·
Rural districts have challenges – just several
students may throw off percentage. Now that parents and students have opted out
– will be difficult to get them to “buy in” to state assessment again….
·
Issue of metro vs. rural schools. 95% unfair for
rural schools. Can be too few students.
(from
Limon meeting, May 20, 2016)
What additional opportunities
should we create for stakeholders to provide input?
If teams from rural school
districts could be in on the planning and allow them to construct what is best
for them.
Should school improvement funds
be awarded as formula or competitive grants?
From a small, rural district, my
concern is that we don’t have time to put a grant together that has “bling” and
so how can we be competitive with Cherry Creek or Denver? Are these grants
going to be allocated regionally and geographically? (from Pueblo meeting, May 4, 2016)
Addendum A – Recommendations for
“Collaborative Stakeholder Engagement”
To help states as they develop a
new ESSA plan, the Education Commission of the States recently published a special
report, “Collaborative Stakeholder Engagement,” a 5-pager with recommendations
on how to make the process most effective. These two bullets suggest—Be sure to hear the rural voice!
- · Through meaningful collaboration among a diverse group of stakeholders–including the “unusual voices” that aren’t always actively engaged–states are more likely to achieve long-lasting positive effects in student achievement, educator satisfaction and cooperation from special interest groups.
- · Whose work is it? - Look for stakeholders who share responsibility for the current situation, are affected by the issues and must be part of the solution…. Engaging all stakeholders early and often, including those who bring critical and differing views, is important to creating an open process. http://www.ecs.org/ec-content/uploads/Collaborative_Stakeholder_Engagement_June-2016.pdf
Addendum
B – “Colorado teacher shortage puts rural schools on brink of crisis,” by Jenny
Brundin
Colorado Public Radio, http://www.cpr.org/news/story/colorado-teacher-shortage-puts-rural-schools-brink-crisis
“About 1,000 freshly minted
teachers graduated in Colorado last year with credentials in elementary
education.
“Genoa-Hugo Elementary school, an
hour east of Denver, only needed one of them. But, ‘they had zero applications
last year,’ said Robert Mitchell, Academic Policy Officer for Educator
Preparation with the Colorado Department of Higher Education. ‘That is somewhat
telling.’ He says Colorado’s rural school districts are on the brink of crisis when it comes to finding enough
teachers to lead classrooms….
Rural Colorado Struggles The Most
“Urban Colorado has its struggles
– but elsewhere, it’s worse.
“‘I don't use the word crisis
very often but we are on the brink of crisis in the rural school districts,’
Mitchell said.
“Rural Colorado already had some
big hurdles. First, there’s the isolation. When the East Central Board of
Cooperative Educational Services' Don Anderson was a principal in Burlington,
he’d often travel to career fairs with a prop. ‘I took a map so they could see,
you are 2.5 hours from Denver and 3.5
from the mountains so you need to know where you are going!’” he laughs.
“Low salaries
in rural Colorado ‘kill us out here,’ Anderson said. Starting pay in many rural
districts is around $30,000, or even less than $25,000 in a few. They can’t
compete with Front Range districts, he says. And some northern Colorado
districts can’t compete with Wyoming, which pays up to $20,000 more.
“Anderson planned a career fair in Limon last April. Twenty-five rural
districts wanted to be there.
“‘We had three teaching applicants,’ he said.
“So it was canceled.
“Perennial shortages used to just
be in math, science and special education, ‘but today, it’s the entire gamut,
its history, PE, elementary,’ he laments.”
[1] http://www.cde.state.co.us/fedprograms/essa - Examples: Denver-78 pages; Durango-19 pages;
Pueblo-17 pages; Limon-15 pages; and more!
[2] See – Recommendations for “Collaborative Stakeholder
Engagement,” Addendum A.
[3] http://www.cde.state.co.us/communications/ruraleducationcouncilfactsheet - This Rural Fact sheet is slightly dated. In 2015-16
there were 100 “small rural districts” (enrolling fewer than 1,000 students
each - but together, over 37,000 students).
[4] 2015-16 Rubric for Evaluating Colorado Teachers (18
pages) http://www.cde.state.co.us/educatoreffectiveness/rubric-for-colorado-teachers
[5] Talking Points, 2015, Colorado Rural Schools Alliance.
[6] http://www.casb.org/cms/lib07/CO01923145/Centricity/Domain/81/RS2-Update%20RAP%20Discussion.pdf. See also http://www.casb.org/Domain/133 - “CASB ...launched a collaborative effort to achieve more flexibility
for small and rural districts by supporting them through the waiver
process. After decades of mounting legislation designed to solve big
problems in big school districts, small and rural school districts are
struggling to operate under a legislative scheme that simply doesn’t fit….”
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