Public education consumes ___% of the state budget, as well as a large portion of local fees and taxes. Every public entity should be accountable to our taxpayers to show what good is being created with those funds. For many decades now, we have been convinced that in public education, high stakes testing provides that accountability. In reality, we know that high stakes testing is more a measure of a child’s zip code: of home life and economic status than of learning. Additionally, high stakes testing has become a multi-million dollar industry, costing Colorado in the neighborhood of $100 million each year and providing dubious results.

We must re-align our priorities to find a way to shift our reliance on high stakes testing to reliable growth models and explore other methods for Colorado.