Author: Erica Meltzer CHALKBEAT COLORADO

A retired data analyst and accountability manager with the Colorado Department of Education is seeking to represent Denver on the State Board of Education. Donna Morganstern is the third Democrat to throw her hat in the ring for the District 1 seat. She’ll compete in a primary against incumbent board member Val Flores and challenger…

Teachers in the Park County school district are on strike Monday after negotiations with the district failed to yield an agreement. This is the third teacher strike in Colorado in less than 18 months. This is the latest in a wave of teacher activism that has swept the nation and also has Chicago teachers on…

Hundreds of Colorado schools are likely to lose their top rating under changes approved by the State Board of Education Thursday, and those that still qualify likely will serve fewer students in poverty. Advocates of this change say it’s a step toward aligning Colorado’s school rating system with the realities of student achievement on state…

The state’s largest teachers union and organizations that represent school boards and district leaders are mounting a united front against proposed changes to how Colorado rates its schools – even as education advocates say the current system leaves parents in the dark. At issue is what’s known as the school performance framework, a measure of…

A former district administrator and teacher of teachers is running to represent Denver’s north and west suburbs on the Colorado State Board of Education. Karla Esser is the director of graduate programs for practicing teachers at Regis University and worked for many years in the tiny Sheridan district as the director of curriculum and instruction.…

More than half of Colorado students in grades three through eight didn’t meet grade-level expectations in reading, writing or math on state tests they took this past spring, and glaring disparities based on income and race remain essentially unchanged. The 2019 Colorado test results released Thursday paint a student performance picture that is substantially similar…

More than a third of Colorado students who graduated from high school in 2017 were flagged as needing additional help in reading or math to do college-level work. This number has barely budged in the 17 years that the Colorado Department of Higher Education has reported on developmental education needs, previously known as remediation, and…

From the presence of social workers to the way schools carry out threat assessments, Colorado’s school safety landscape looks like a patchwork quilt of practices and resources. This lack of consistency was one of the key takeaways from the first meeting this week of a special legislative committee on school safety, convened in the aftermath…

For a third year, 10 Colorado lawmakers have convened to try to find a fairer and more effective way to fund the state’s schools. Nearly everyone agrees that Colorado’s 25-year-old school finance formula is outdated and inefficient – and there are plenty of ideas about how we could do better – but the issues are…