Senate education committee advances bill to study shorter statewide testing windows after hours‑long debate

Senate sponsors said the bill is designed to reduce the time Colorado students spend sitting for statewide tests while preserving federal accountability.

Senator Byron Pelton, the bill’s prime sponsor, told the committee that Colorado students in grades 3 through 8 can spend “up to 11 hours each year taking statewide assessments” and that the proposed working group would examine ways to cut seat time while maintaining compliance with the Every Student Succeeds Act. “Students regain instructional time, schools receive more meaningful data and Colorado maintains accountability while using resources more responsibly,” Pelton said.

Why it matters: The bill, S.B. 68, asks for a vendor‑neutral panel of educators and practitioners to review assessments and return recommendations by the end of the year. Supporters said the long testing windows disrupt instruction, add administrative burden and cause stress for young students; opponents warned that shortening tests risks weakening the statewide comparability that drives resource allocation and accountability.

Opponents, including Dan Schaller of the Colorado League of Charter Schools, argued the legislature has already created an accountability task force that spent more than a year producing recommendations. “The accountability task force did important work, and the results of that work are just now making their way through the system. We ought to allow those results to fully materialize,” Schaller said, asking the committee to vote no.

Practitioners and district leaders gave dozens of concrete examples of operational burdens. Nadia Shore of the Colorado Children’s Campaign said statewide assessments are “the bedrock of educational equity in Colorado” because they provide statewide, disaggregated data that can expose gaps for historically underserved students.

CDE position and state board: A Colorado Department of Education official said CDE is already examining timing and that recent adjustments shortened some elementary units. The official also reported that the State Board of Education reviewed the bill and opposed it by a 7–2 margin, saying much of the work described in SB68 is duplicative of existing studies.

Amendment and procedural outcome: Committee members adopted Amendment L001, a strike‑below that clarified the working group membership, allowed districts to opt for written (paper‑and‑pencil) administration at district expense, and specified CDE consultation. After extended questioning about test design, adaptive testing and opt‑out impacts, the committee voted 4–3 to send SB68 to the Appropriations Committee.

What happens next: SB68 will go to Appropriations, where fiscal questions and implementation details can be resolved. If funded and enacted, the working group would be charged to report back and recommend specific changes to reduce seat time while attempting to preserve statewide comparability.

The committee record includes extensive testimony from superintendents and educators on both sides of the issue, and the debate centered on trade‑offs between minimizing seat time and preserving a single, statewide measure for equity and resource targeting.