The Colorado Department of Education

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Assessment Revision Home

Introduction

The Colorado Academic Standards were recently revised to include early school readiness and postsecondary competencies, as well as to reflect both workforce readiness and 21st century skills. They were adopted by the State Board of Education on December 10, 2009. In addition to the updated state content standards, the Colorado Department of Education is currently developing a new state assessment system that will be implemented during the 2011-2012 school year. This new system will reflect the expectations of the updated standards and the requirements of CAP4K (Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids), which calls for both school readiness and Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness assessments.

For “Frequently Asked Questions” about the assessment revision process, please see the document below.

The timeline (created October 23, 2009) for work related to the revision of the state assessment system can be found at the link below.

Information on the assessment revision regional meetings can be found at:

The revision process

A stakeholder advisory group has recently been assembled to help frame the issues of the current state assessment system, recommend improvements, and define the work of potential subcommittee groups. Please click here for more information about the Stakeholder Committeee.

To assist in the work of the Stakeholder Committee, it has created the following subcommittees:

1. School Readiness and Early Childhood Assessment

2. Postsecondary Readiness Assessment

3. Summative Assessment subcommittee (NCLB requirements)

4. Growth Subcommittee - including formative (Interim/Benchmark)

5. Assessment for Special Populations

Please click here for more information about the subcommittees.

Assessment survey

The Colorado Department of Education asked the public to help us determine what aspects of the current assessment system are important, including what should be considered when potential changes are discussed. We constructed a survey to help gather some of this information. The conclusions from this survey were compiled and presented at the January 11, 2010 Assessment Stakeholders Meeting in Pueblo, CO.

Feedback/Comments

If you would like to give us your feedback at any point in the process, please send all comments to: Assessment_Review@cde.state.co.us