(The Center Square) – Members of Colorado's Accountability, Accreditation, Student Performance, and Resource Inequity Task Force conducted 150 hours of meetings and determined that the state needs to overhaul its education accountability system.

The task force issued a report last week that said the state needs to change how it evaluates and supports K-12 schools.

The task force, formed last year, features 26 members, including parents, teachers, students, and community leaders.

The report looked at ways the state could address student outcome disparities, how to allocate resources to districts in a fairer manner, and how to help parents understand how schools prepare their children for life beyond K-12 public school.

The report made 30 recommendations and will be presented to the State Board of Education on Wednesday, November 13.

Here are the core principles behind those recommendations, according to the report:

• Refine how the state accountability system rates schools and districts (e.g., addressing some of the challenges that schools serving smaller student populations face, adjusting performance frameworks to better reflect diverse student populations, paying greater attention to achievement gaps between student groups)
• Enhance the accountability system's Growth, Achievement, and Postsecondary Readiness Metrics (e.g., adding a new sub-indicator to help parents understand the efforts their schools are making to prepare students for postsecondary success)
• Modernize state assessments used for accountability (e.g., adjusting state assessments to be adaptive and accessible in multiple languages, encouraging assessment participation, and improving the timelines for sharing results)
• Improve data reporting and sharing for parents and communities, educators, education leaders, and policymakers (e.g., creating a statewide dashboard that is user-friendly for multiple audiences)
• Strengthen school and district improvement processes (e.g., implementing a comprehensive approach to improvement planning—including a system of early identification and intervention, expanding and targeting how schools are recognized for their successes)

The task force tells the state legislature, the State Board of Education, and the Colorado Department of Education to implement changes in a way that reflects the needs of its diverse array of schools and students. Additionally, it offers no specific timelines for implementing these changes.

One can read the full report here.