By Matt Gleckman

Over the past year, Colorado students have come under serious academic scrutiny, and because of the passing of SB 186 Friday, schools will now be measured under the same microscope.

Otherwise known as Governor Bill Owens’ education reform packet, SB 186 is a 160-page document which focuses on independent charter schools, transportation tokens, an excellent-school award program, accountability, safety and the controversial school grading.

"Schools will be graded against each other on a scale from A through F," said Bill Thompson, Re-1 superintendent of schools. "The top 8 percent of schools will receive As and the bottom 2 percent will receive Fs," he said.

The bill states that any public school that consistently receives a grade of F would be forced to become a charter school — receiving new management, educational programs and possibly teachers.

While the bottom 2 percent of schools won’t have a choice, the top 8 percent will be recommended to become charter schools, Thompson stated.

"This means that you have potentially 10 percent of the schools each year becoming charter schools," Thompson said. "This just seems like a way to push vouchers and charters. It is not promoting public education," he said.

In an interview with the Cortez Journal yesterday, however, Commissioner of Education William Moloney stated that these guidelines had been changed during one of the bill’s many amendments.

When asked what will become of the top 8 percent of the schools who receive a letter grade of A, Moloney said, "We will congratulate them."

The commissioner also stated that the "bottom 2 percent" figure, established from the basic bell curve, will only be used for the first year in order to get the program established.

"After 65 different amendments, the bill passed by a vote of 25 to 10," Moloney said.

"The bill underwent lots of scrutiny but I think that we ended up with a pretty good package," he said. "We were able to pass the two largest portions (of the bill) which were the annual assessments and school report cards."

Beginning in the spring semester of 2001, reading assessments will become mandatory in grades 5, 6, 8 and 9 and a college entrance examination in grade 11, while writing assessments in grades 3, 5, 6, 8 and 9 and math assessments in grades 6, 7 and 9 will become mandatory beginning in the spring semester of 2002.

Schools will be graded on academic performance, improvement and school safety. "Schools will not receive a separate grade for safety, though," Moloney said.

"Everybody wants to have high expectations for the schools and I agree with testing every year," said Thompson. "My concern is what we do with the grades.

"There are multiple indicators that can be used to evaluate schools and the growth of students," says Thompson. If a school receives a grade of F it could mean a number of things. The school might just have a class with a lot of challenged students, he said. It doesn’t mean that the school is filled with bad teachers or bad programs.