Sponsors present wide-ranging K-12 accountability rewrite; committee lays bill over after fiscal concerns

House Bill 12-78, the K-12 Accountability Bill, was introduced to the House Education Committee as a package of 30 unanimous task-force recommendations intended to reshape Colorado's school accountability system.

The bill's sponsors, Representative Matt Byrd and Representative Anne Lukens, said the measure implements a multiyear stakeholder process that followed a 2021 audit and a 2023 task force that reached unanimous consensus on the recommendations. Lukens asked the committee to "lay this bill over for action only" so sponsors could finalize technical amendments after the hearing; the committee granted that request and laid the bill over for action only (laid over for action only; motion by Rep. Anne Lukens; outcome: postponed/laid over for action only).

The bill would: move several task-force recommendations into statute; require earlier test-result releases; create a single public accountability dashboard for school- and district-level data; add postsecondary and workforce-readiness indicators to performance frameworks; change how students are counted in subgroup and overall measures; require corrective-action plans for low test participation; and fund additional studies (including N-size volatility and weighting of frameworks) through the Colorado Department of Education (CDE).

Why it matters: sponsors said the bill is designed to make the system more equitable, to give earlier warning and support to schools and districts, and to give parents and communities clearer, faster access to accountability data. Representative Byrd told the committee, "Getting test results back to school sooner is a really big deal," and described changes that would move some reporting deadlines up to June 1 so schools get more timely data.

Fiscal note and process: much of the committee's questioning focused on the fiscal note. Representative Garcia Sander cited a preliminary fiscal estimate mentioning "over $5.5 million" in the first year, about $6 million in year two and similar out-year costs, plus multiple new FTE at CDE. Sponsors said they sought to move unanimous task-force consensus into a single bill so the state could produce a comprehensive fiscal estimate. Representative Byrd said the cost estimates will inform negotiations with stakeholders and that sponsors are aiming to lower the net fiscal impact.

Members and witnesses discussed specific fiscal line items included in the fiscal analysis: expansion of the Colorado Spanish Language Arts (CSLA) assessment and content-area translation costs (fiscal-analyst figures cited $2,000,000 in one line and higher amounts in later years), a proposed statewide accountability dashboard (about $52,000 in the fiscal estimate), and "continuous improvement supports" that were costed at about $180,000 the first year and $150,000 thereafter according to committee discussion.

Debate and testimony: testimony ran the spectrum. Superintendents and task-force members who helped craft the recommendations supported the bill's direction and urged continued, targeted investment. Don Haddad, superintendent of St. Vrain Valley Schools and a task-force member, said several recommended changes would be "cost neutral," citing discontinuing multiple counting of individual students for different subgroups as an example that would reduce skew in ratings without added cost.

Organizations and educators provided an amend-position, asking sponsors to remove or alter punitive measures tied to accountability and to prioritize educator retention and community-led remedies. The Colorado Education Association and district teacher representatives said they were in an amend position and warned against expanding standardized testing.

Opposition witnesses, including Judy Solano of Advocates for Public Education Policy and neighborhood educators, argued the bill over-emphasizes test-based measures and does not address underlying funding gaps for districts that serve high concentrations of students in poverty, multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Solano said the bill "fails to address the core inequities" highlighted by task-force members and that the fiscal note money would be better spent implementing adequacy-study recommendations.

Technical and policy details discussed: - Testing and translations: the task force recommended translating assessments where demand exists and expanding Colorado Spanish Language Arts (CSLA) in additional grades. Sponsors and CDE staff described an amendment (L1) that would set a translation threshold (discussed in committee as 1,500 students statewide in an assessed grade) but CDE testified that the cost to create high-quality translated large-scale assessments drives the fiscal estimate. CDE's chief assessment officer explained those costs reflect professional translation, adaptation for paper- and online-administered versions, and vendor validation. - Counting of students/subgroup weighting: sponsors proposed counting students once in the all-students group while continuing to report subgroup outcomes to reduce the statistical distortion created when one student is counted multiple times across subgroups. The proposal would also keep disaggregated reporting so district leaders and the public can still see subgroup outcomes. - Students exiting IEPs: the bill would continue to count students with disabilities in subgroup measures for two years after they exit an IEP to avoid penalizing schools that helped those students make progress. "If we get students to perform at a level which we want them to perform ... we have to ensure the work that schools, teachers ... have done continues to be tracked," Don Haddad said. - Accountability clock and supports: the bill aims to provide earlier identification of distress indicators and deploy supports earlier in the accountability sequence while allowing flexibility later in the clock; sponsors said one amendment (L6) would substantially rework that section. - Dashboard and public reporting: the task force recommended a unified, user-friendly state dashboard that combines statewide and local measures, including the possibility for districts to upload local interim-assessment metrics. Supporters said improved presentation of data will make information more usable for families and communities. - Postsecondary and workforce readiness: the bill would expand indicators beyond traditional measures to include credentials, concurrent-enrollment and work-based learning; sponsors and task-force members argued this better reflects the range of student pathways. - Cut scores and technical oversight: witnesses and the department discussed last-year adjustments to cut scores after statewide declines on some high-school assessments; CDE staff said they worked with the Technical Advisory Panel and the state board to set new, defensible cut scores and communicated the changes to districts.

Next steps: sponsors told the committee they plan to file technical amendments (L1'L6 referenced during the hearing) before the next hearing and to return next week for action. Representative Lukens made the motion to lay the bill over for action only; the committee granted the motion.

What was not decided: no amendments were adopted and no final vote was taken; sponsors asked for time to refine technical language and to negotiate fiscal trade-offs with stakeholders. Several committee members said they wanted the final amendment language in hand before voting.

Speakers in committee included bill sponsors Representative Matt Byrd and Representative Anne Lukens; committee members Representative Garcia Sander, Rep. Bacon, Rep. Story, Rep. Phillips, Rep. Gilchrist, Rep. Winter and others; CDE witnesses including Deputy Commissioner Rhonda Hannaford, Assistant Commissioner Lindsay Jekyll, Chief Assessment Officer Christina Worth-Hawkins, and Lisa Medler; and external witnesses including Judy Solano (Advocates for Public Education Policy), Don Haddad (St. Vrain Valley Schools), Wendy Berhanzl (Harrison SD 2), Brenda DeCona (Ready Colorado), Nicholas Hernandez (Transform Education Now), union leaders and classroom teachers.

The hearing was procedural: sponsors emphasized they sought consensus language that integrates the task force's recommendations, while lawmakers and witnesses focused on the bill's fiscal impact, how translations and assessment changes would be implemented, and safeguards to avoid unfair punitive uses of accountability measures.

Ending: the committee laid House Bill 12-78 over for action only so sponsors could file and circulate amendments and continue negotiations on the fiscal note before a final committee vote.