SB 17-114

Senate Bill 17-114, titled "Accountability For School Districts & Schools," focuses on improving how Colorado evaluates the performance of its public schools and school districts. The bill introduces a new measure that tracks academic progress over four years, emphasizing growth in student test scores and narrowing achievement gaps. It also changes the process for addressing underperforming schools by removing the previous authority to revoke accreditation based on poor performance plans and instead requires a review panel to recommend corrective actions when needed. Since this bill has been signed into law, it is now active and being implemented to enhance accountability in Colorado's education system.

Official Summary

Under existing law, the department of education (department) considers the performance of each school district and the state charter school institute (institute) on specified indicators when assigning accreditation categories. The bill creates a new performance indicator that measures the improvement achieved over the preceding 4 school years by a public school, school district, the state charter school institute, and the state as a whole in student scores on state assessments and in closing the achievement and growth gaps. The bill directs the state board of education (state board) and the department to place the greatest emphasis on the academic growth performance indicator when determining the appropriate accreditation category for each school district and the institute. Under existing law, the department may recommend that the state board remove a school district's or the institute's accreditation if the school district or institute is accredited with turnaround plan and fails to make substantial progress under the turnaround plan or the school district or institute is accredited with priority improvement plan or lower for 5 consecutive school years. If the state board removes accreditation, it specifies the corrective actions the school district or institute must take to be accredited again. The bill repeals the authority to remove a school district's or the institute's accreditation based on performance under a priority improvement or turnaround plan. If a school district or the institute fails to make substantial progress under a priority improvement or turnaround plan and is accredited with priority improvement plan or lower for 5 consecutive school years, the commissioner of education must assign the state review panel to critically evaluate the school district's or institute's performance and recommend one or more corrective actions. The state board must specify the corrective actions the school district or institute must take. (Note: This summary applies to this bill as introduced.)

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