Education reforms to be submitted to legislature in January
Only one in five Colorado ninth-grade students will graduate from college, according to the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, an issue that the Governor Bill Ritter’s P-20 Education Coordinating Council aims to address.
The council met last week to vote on recommendations for education reform in Colorado. In part, the council worked to address ways of streamlining the transition period for students from high school to college, and to ensure that students are qualified for collegiate work.
“I think for sure that it is an important issue to address,” said sophomore ecology major Helen Van Dam. “I personally tried to challenge myself in high school, but I know that others did not receive the same preparation for college.”
The P-20 Council is comprised of five subcommittees that each address specific education-related issues.
CU Dean of the School of Education Lorrie Shepard is a member of the Data and Accountability Subcommittee. She said that the recommendations are a good start to reforming Colorado education as a whole.
“They are generally quite good and important,” Shepard said. “In some areas they are preliminary. The council saw its work as just beginning.”
The Bell Policy Center, a Colorado non-profit organization, is encouraged by the council’s preliminary work.
“These reforms are a needed step forward,” Frank Waterous, senior policy analyst for the center, said in a press release.
Shepard emphasized that the recommendations developed by the council merely address the broadest and most immediate issues for the time being. She said that the council will develop additional recommendations that relate to college and are more specific further down the line.
“The first set of recommendations does not address college directly,” Shepard said.
Shepard said recommendations for collegiate levels of education will require more data so that evaluative studies can be completed. Recommendations for colleges will focus on retention and completion of collegiate degrees.
The majority of the council’s recommendations currently address issues at the preschool through high school levels. Recommendations include the elimination of a waitlist for early education, higher teacher pay and a reduction of the dropout rate.
Many students support the idea of increasing pay for teachers.
“I think the most important part of education is the teacher,” Van Dam said. “They have such important jobs; I’d like to see them paid more.”
Van Dam said that she thinks the majority of a student’s education comes from maturity and experience with professors in high school and college.
“There is an emphasis on the transitional period between high school and college,” Shepard said. “The focus of the governor’s charge is treating college as a goal for changes in the educational system as a whole.”
The council presented its recommendations to Ritter on Nov. 27. Ritter will submit his recommendations to the state legislature when session resumes on Jan. 9.
Many recommendations will have to be prioritized when introduced to the legislature, as several come with high price tags.
Shepard said that the council expects the recommendations will be well received by the legislative body.
“Our meetings were well attended by legislators, especially by the House Education Committee,” Shepard said. “The mood was very optimistic.”
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Katherine Spencer at Katherine.a.spencer@thecampuspress.com
