File Photo by Philip B. Poston/Sentinel Colorado
Technology is advancing at a breathtaking pace. We now live in a world where real time translation devices can instantly convert one language into another, allowing people to communicate across borders, cultures, and continents with unprecedented ease. Students can hold a device up to a conversation and understand it in their home language, or use apps that translate complex text in seconds.
Yet, when it comes to our public education system in Colorado, this technological progress seems to stop at the schoolhouse door, especially during state mandated testing.
Colorado’s assessment system remains largely English only, even for subjects like math where language should not be the primary barrier to demonstrating knowledge. Currently, only one state test is available in Spanish, the Colorado Spanish Language Arts assessment. Even that option is limited to grades 3 and 4, and only for students formally designated as Limited English Proficient or Not English Proficient. For all other grades and subjects, students are expected to perform in English regardless of how recently they arrived in the country or how fluent they are in academic language.
This disconnect between what technology makes possible and what policy allows is stark and troubling.
In a district like Aurora Public Schools, this gap has real consequences. APS serves students who speak dozens of languages and come from families from all over the world. Many of these students are strong in math, science, and critical thinking, but state tests measure their English proficiency more than their actual content knowledge. When scores are used to judge student ability, school performance, and even district effectiveness, the results paint an incomplete and often misleading picture. Students internalize these outcomes, and too often they are labeled as behind when the system has simply failed to meet them where they are.
The impact goes beyond test scores. Teachers in multilingual classrooms work tirelessly to support students, but their efforts are undermined when assessments do not reflect the reality of their classrooms.
Schools are pressured based on data that does not account for language access, which can influence funding decisions, intervention models, and public perception. Families who already face barriers to navigating the education system see their children struggle on paper despite thriving in daily learning. This erodes trust and reinforces inequities that districts like APS are actively trying to dismantle.
If technology can translate conversations in real time, our education system can do better than English only testing. Colorado’s State Legislature has the authority to require the Department of Education to allow language accommodations in state assessments, particularly for non language dependent subjects like math and science.
Language accommodations for state assessments are not about lowering standards, they are about accurately measuring what students know and can do. Colorado has an opportunity to align its policies with both modern technology and the lived realities of its students. Until we do, districts like Aurora Public Schools and the children we serve will continue to be held back by outdated rules in a rapidly changing world.
Kristin Mallory “Westerberg,” Juris Doctorate, serves on the Aurora Public Schools Board of Education and is an advocate for public education.
I disagree.
Fundamentally, the child who fully learns the language most widely encountered in the workforce is the better prepared. In the end, coddling children who struggle with English simply does not prepare them for the real world.
Further, what school district has the funding for additional language accomodation? Is this really highest and best use of scarce funding? Everything else about our public education is performing well and is probably overfunded? None, no and definitely no.
They always claim it’s not about “lowering standards” while they go on lowering standards. This is why 40-70% of incoming college freshmen have to take remedial courses, to the point that Colorado Democrats had to ban remedial requirements to get to baseline as it was getting too embarrassing for their stats.