A key deadline in the Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids school-reform plan turned into Topic A at an otherwise routine meeting of the governor’s P-20 Education Coordinating Council Thursday.

CAP4K is a multi-year program intended to produce definitions of both school readiness and postsecondary and workforce readiness, write new state standards for what students should learn in all subjects at each grade level, select new statewide tests and align both school district graduation requirements and college entrance requirements with the new standards and definitions.

You’re right, that’s a lot of work to do. The law has a four-year timetable for the task.

But two key pieces – defining postsecondary and workforce readiness and adopting new state content standards – both are supposed to be finished by Dec. 15, 2009. The state Board of Education and the Colorado Commission on Higher Education are supposed to jointly develop the definition, and the SBE alone is responsible for new standards.

That double deadline has many P-20 members nervous, and the questions asked Thursday boiled down to this: Shouldn’t the definition of what students should learn be crafted before the detailed, grade-by-grade learning standards are determined?

“I’m very concerned” about the timeline, said Elliott Asp, Cherry Creek assistant superintendent, echoing the comments of other council members.

Much of the discussion was focused on the parallel but seemingly separate tracks the state Department of Education and Department of Higher Education are following to develop their own definitions of readiness.

Julie Carnahan, chief academic officer for DHE, outlined the process her agency is following, which includes 24 meetings around the state during the next year. A key meeting is scheduled for Oct. 10 at which college faculty from around the state will discuss the issue.

Carnahan said “the awkwardness of the legislation has been problematic for us,” but that DHE would finish its work on time and in cooperation with CDE, which has its own schedule of meetings and work on the definition. “We are as aligned as we possibly can be.”

Some council members asked if DHE could finish work on the readiness definition early so it could be used as standards are developed. “I’m certainly uncomfortable promising we can bring this in early,” she said.

Carnahan defended her department’s process, saying, “Sometimes it takes a little more to get them [college faculty] together. … We have to get to that group” and get their buy-in if alignment of K-12 and higher education is to be achieved, Carnahan said.

She termed the Oct. 10 meeting “a moment to do a primal scream, and then we’ll kick-start the process.”

Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien, a council co-chair, said, “We’re facing a national crisis” in education and asked if there is “some way to get a sense of urgency in higher education.”

(Many observers have long felt that college and university faculty will be the hardest group to sell on the alignment and integration inherent in CAP4K.)

Ken Turner, deputy CDE commissioner, defended the process in his usual brisk fashion. “We’re moving forward. … We’re on schedule to finish by 2009.”

Asp sees the situation this way: “We’re going to go down the track with two separate trains and hope they meet.”

Council member Jerry Sirbu of Platt College suggested the council perhaps should quickly come up with its own definition of postsecondary and workforce readiness to help move the process along.

Carnahan diplomatically disagreed, asking, “Let us come back to you with what comes out of that [Oct. 10] meeting. … That may be the better way to do this.”

But, O’Brien said she would work with council staff to come up with a way for members to share ideas about the definition over the next couple of weeks. “It’s completely meant to aid all of you,” she said to Carnahan.

Matt Gianneschi, top education aide to Gov. Bill Ritter, called the dual deadline “one of the most important issues out there” and hinted the council might need to discuss the matter before its scheduled Oct. 16 meeting.

The first CAP4K deadline falls this coming Dec. 15, when the SBE is supposed to decide on a definition of school readiness. The original draft of the CAP4K bill also set the deadline for that as Dec. 15, 2009, but it was moved up a year as the bill moved through the legislature.

The P-20 Council is a 28-member advisory panel created by Ritter in 2007 and includes teachers, administrators, professors and business representatives. It meets monthly, but much of its work is done in five subcommittees. While the council has no power to make laws or regulations or create programs, its influence was felt in the 2008 legislature on such legislation as CAP4K, the Colorado Counselor Corps, funding for early childhood education and full-day kindergarten, and on a bill to improve education data systems.

Five new members have been named to the council: Nate Easley, deputy director of the Denver Scholarship Federation; Matt Nehring, science and math department chair at Adams State College; Zach Neumeye, CEO of Sage Holdings and chair of Colorado Succeeds, the business-based education advocacy group; Donna Souther, chief academic officer of Aims Community College, and George Sparks, president of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.



- Education News Colorado backgrounder on CAP4K, including all deadlines