The Colorado Civil Rights Division ruled that the High Plains Library District violated prohibitions on discriminatory firing and retaliation
reading
Posted inEducation, News, Politics and Government
Did this Colorado transparency law make it easier to understand how schools teach reading?
Colorado has unveiled an online database showing what reading programs schools use in kindergarten through third grade, part of a broader state effort to improve how schools teach reading. At a time when lawmakers in many states want teaching materials publicly posted in order to limit what schools teach about race, gender, and history, the […]
Posted inEducation, News, Politics and Government
Despite pushback, Colorado will enforce K-3 teacher training on reading as planned
Colorado will stick to an August deadline for early elementary teachers to complete mandatory training on how to teach reading, despite pushback from some school district leaders about burdensome reporting requirements. Most State Board of Education members on Wednesday agreed that districts should be able to handle the job by the deadline. Districts that don’t […]
Posted inColoradans, Crime and Courts, News
The alleged killer thought no one would miss him. But the “reading man” has been missed — and now memorialized.
An imaginary south wind has bent an iron-work tree over a curved metal chair and riffled the pages of a sheet-metal book titled, “And You Also.” That was a signature comment of Warren Barnes, a gentle, homeless 69-year-old who was a downtown fixture known as “the reading man” because he so often sat along this […]
Posted inEducation, News
Colorado cracks down on schools using weak reading curriculum. Advocates worry about backpedaling.
Colorado officials have ordered 15% of the state’s school districts to replace low-quality elementary reading programs, a major step toward enforcing a 2019 law that requires schools to use reading curriculum backed by science in kindergarten through third grade. The state education department sent out dozens of letters in late October notifying districts that one or more […]
Posted inEducation, News
First-graders in the reading red zone: How one Colorado school is tackling pandemic gaps
It’s the third week of school at Remington Elementary in Colorado Springs and the first-grade teachers gathered in a small classroom say more students than usual are struggling with letter names and sounds — skills typically mastered in kindergarten. A bar chart projected on a television screen bears out these observations, showing that 40% of […]
Posted inEducation, News, Politics and Government
6 takeaways from a $1.5 million evaluation of Colorado’s reading law
Colorado’s landmark 2012 reading law led schools around the state to spend more time helping struggling readers, an external evaluation found. But the report leaves some key questions unanswered, including a specific accounting of how hundreds of millions of state dollars for struggling readers were spent and which interventions actually worked. State officials said the […]
Posted inEducation, News
In bid to boost Colorado reading scores, small program shows promise where larger efforts failed
Nearly a decade ago, Colorado lawmakers passed a splashy new reading law that sent tens of millions of dollars a year to school districts statewide to help struggling readers. The money paid for summer school, full-day kindergarten, and tutoring programs for students in kindergarten through third grade, but those efforts barely made a dent in […]
Posted inOpinion, Opinion Columns
Opinion: It’s time for Colorado’s teachers to “know better” about the science of reading
Early in my teaching career, like many other educators, I used a balanced-literacy approach and believed that using the “three-cueing” theory of reading instruction was sufficient for teaching my primary grade students how to read. (As the journal EducationWeek recently defined it, three-cueing is a strategy that “involves prompting students to draw on context and […]
Posted inEducation, News
Colorado may shift to a more in-depth reading exam for some new teachers
Some prospective Colorado teachers soon could be required to take a new, more rigorous test on reading instruction to earn their state teaching licenses. The State Board of Education will decide Wednesday whether to adopt the new exam, called the Praxis 5205, for elementary, early childhood, and special education candidates seeking teaching licenses. If approved, […]