Statetap: Protest against standardized testing spreads in Colorado

 
Colorado Springs high school seniors joined the rapidly growing protest over standardized testing across Colorado. Parents and students feel that testing — which, until now, has only been administered to third-through-ninth-grade kids – is unnecessary and distracting in the last year of high school. Schools and districts that don’t get a 95 percent participation rate risk losing state funding. A mass opt-out in Boulder county, spread to Douglas and now to El Paso county. Education officials in other districts are reporting concerns that the movement against standardized testing will spread. The student test sit-outs have combined with a national lawsuit centered on Pine Creek high school and massive protests of proposed conservative-politics changes to history curriculum in Jefferson County schools to make the education beat one of the most exciting in the state this fall. Via the Gazette.

statetap President Obama is promising to take executive action to advance immigration reform and the new Republican majority in Congress is threatening him with gridlock if he does. (Could there be any more gridlock?) A showdown is imminent. Brandon Johanssen takes a look at what that could all mean for people in Aurora. Via the Aurora Sentinel.

A panel of six faculty members at CU Boulder will hear the university administration’s case against tenured philosophy professor David Barnett. CU President Bruce Benson and the Board of Regents will weigh the panel’s recommendations, then make a final decision about whether to move ahead with this rare termination process. Barnett is accused of retaliating against a female graduate student who confided that she had been sexually assaulted by another student. The university paid a settlement upwards of $800,000 to the woman earlier this summer. Via the Daily Camera.

One man is confirmed dead and two more are in the hospital after a frozen water line ruptured at a Halliburton oil well site in Weld County on Thursday morning. Fracking operations had not yet begun, so there was water in the pipe but not fracking fluid. Halliburton hasn’t released any further information about the incident. Via the Greeley Tribune.