Heads up, teachers and citizens of Colorado! You may get the results of the state’s standardized CMAS/PARCC tests, the annual tests taken in winter and spring of last school year, as soon as early ski season of this school year.

PARCC, the standardized testing consortium to which Colorado belongs, didn’t even set its “cut scores” for grades 3-8 until Sept. 10. By that time, California, with about seven times the number of Colorado students, had already released its Smarter Balanced annual test results. Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is the alternative to PARCC.

PARCC hasn’t revealed many details of its scoring system, such as how many or what percent of questions students have to answer correctly to score at a particular level. Mercedes Schneider states in her EduBlog that state boards of education, commissioners or superintendents may yet change their state’s PARCC cut scores. If they make changes, cross-state comparability, a critical PARCC test benefit cited by supporters, will not occur.

Let’s recall that PARCC tests chewed up days of learning time in Colorado’s winter and spring of 2015. Many Colorado parents objected to the testing in 2013, and the state’s 1202 Task Force in 2014 received information that confirmed there was too much testing. Even the president of the United States, just this week, says too much testing is getting in the way of learning.

Colorado’s voters will apparently not have CMAS/PARCC test results in time for November’s school board elections. Voters could find the results handy in deciding which school board candidates to support. [Ed. Note: Noonan is a candidate in the Jefferson County Board of Education election.]

Some candidates want to use annual test results to identify and compensate their “high performing teachers,” while some want to reduce state testing substantially or set up alternative testing systems.

The Denver Public Schools board races split between candidates supported by Democrats for Education Reform and candidates supported by the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. DFERs, along with their allies Colorado Succeeds and A+Denver, fought hard against changes to the state’s current testing system. They assert that comparing schools in-state and across states trumps increased learning time gained by reduced testing.

The governor and many legislators passed HB15-1323 to eliminate state-mandated tests in 12th grade and reduce some READ Act tests. They made small tweaks for testing grades 3-9, with eighth- and ninth-graders still hit by a blizzard of exams. Colorado’s citizens, however, can’t tell whether these policy decisions make sense.

The state’s testing system supposedly brings accountability to teachers, schools and districts so everyone can see how our schools are doing. With the long delay in releasing test results, it’s time for accountability to go in the other direction. Timely, comparable, reliable test results were the promise to the citizens of Colorado. So far, so little.

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.