Content Collaboratives

Colorado Content Collaboratives (CCCs)
By Teachers For Teachers
Working at the intersection of the new Colorado Academic Standards, Educator Effectiveness and New Assessments

Launched February 1st 2012!
 

2012 Colorado Content Collaboratives are P-12 educators from around the state coming together to identify and create high-quality assessments, which are aligned to the new Colorado Academic Standards and may be used in the context of Educator Effectiveness evaluations.
 

Cohort I Collaboratives for Dance, Drama & Theatre Arts, Music, Reading, Writing & Communicating, Social Studies and Visual Arts began their work on February 1st, 2012 in Denver and will be meeting through May, 2012.
 

Cohort II Collaboratives for Comprehensive Health, Mathematics, Physical Education, Science, World Languages and Career and Technical Education will meet July through November, 2012.

The Collaboratives are a four-year initiative. The first year of work will focus on the reviewing and creation of fair, valid and reliable measures of student learning (see flow chart below). Those measures will then be piloted and peer reviewed for their utility in educator effectiveness evaluations. In future years, the collaboratives, using the measures, will focus on instructional practice for best teaching to mastery.

Important Announcements

Content Collaborative Fact Sheet - September 2012

What is Happening Now:
Interim and summative assessments used in the measuring of student learning over time for the purpose of educator evaluation have been researched, reviewed, and are being set up for a one year pilot in Cohort I. These “already created” quizzes, pre-post tests, performance events, tasks, tests, or other “term” measures of academic standards have been recommended or partially recommended by the Colorado teacher content collaborative members in Dance, Drama & Theatre Arts, Music, Reading, Writing & Communicating, Social Studies, and Visual Arts. For the next twelve months, Cohort I will continue to grow their expertise in assessment and simultaneously carry on with the work of filling their respective content areas of this bank.

Cohort II Content Collaboratives of Colorado teachers began July 23-24, 2012 in Pueblo, to do the same work as above in Mathematics, Science, Comprehensive Health, Physical Education, World Languages, and Career and Technical Education. Cohort II will meet four times over the next four months to review and score assessments for PK-12 in each of their content area.

While not entirely filled, these small or significantly larger measures for each grade level expectation constitute a substantial start for helping educators to use fair, valid and credible proof points in combination with each other in order to show student learning over time. This list will be ready for voluntary use in 2013.

CDE is working in active and appreciative partnership with the Colorado Department of Higher Education, The National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, Inc., and the Colorado Legacy Foundation to support the development and implementation of the Colorado Content Collaboratives.