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Summit High School Debate takes a top prize

Summit Daily staff report
Members of the Summit High School Speech and Debate Team celebrate their first-place trophy at the State Qualifying Tournament in Delta, Colorado on Saturday, Feb. 27. The group now heads to Fort Collins this upcoming weekend to compete in the state tournament.
Courtesy of Summit School District |

The Summit High School Speech and Debate Team took first place at the State Qualifying Tournament in Delta, Colorado, the weekend of Feb. 26-27.

Summit is one of 14 schools in CHSAA’s Western Region of the state’s tournament school division. There are 139 tournament schools in CHSAA’s seven-region speech and debate interscholastic division.

Summit had an impressive 13 students qualify for the Colorado State Tournament, which takes place in Fort Collins this upcoming weekend, March 18-20. Students who placed at the Delta event include:



Dramatic Interpretation:

Cait McCluskie (1st), Randy Losch (2nd) and Amber Walsh (4th)



Duo Interpretation:

Calliope Cortright and Summer Krueger (1st), and Katie Mason and Keelie Rix (2nd)

Poetry:

Orion Van Oss (2nd), Alana LeBaron (5th), and Rebecca Schroeder (6th)

Extemporaneous Speaking:

Claire Davidson (2nd)

Public Forum Debate:

Tye Brown-Wolf and Grant Morgan (2nd)

First Alternates:

Alexandra Clarke, Anakayla Carchi Easterly

State Board adjusts English-language testing rules

In a 4-3 vote, Colorado’s Board of Education approved revisions to rules for its Read to Ensure Academic Development (READ) Act last week, now requiring all K-3 students in bilingual or dual-language programs to be assessed in English once a year.

The change will impact approximately 6,500 students out of Colorado’s 270,000 K-3 students. The rules still allow districts to choose from among seven test in English or Spanish, which will take between 10 and 45 minutes to complete.

“Teachers need to know how their students are progressing in the acquisition of reading in English,” Steve Durham, board chairman, said through a news release. “Without that knowledge, we would be doing students a disservice.”

Districts that choose to assess in Spanish must now assess once a year in English to monitor progress. The previous version of the READ Act did not require an assessment in English.

The READ Act’s assessments identify students who are deficient and the tests are used to establish a plan for intervention services. This new requirement to test in English, however, does not have to be reported or used to create a READ plan.

The original READ Act rules were approved in 2013, requiring all students to be tested in English in order to determine significant reading deficiencies. Concerns were raised about potential misidentification of reading inadequacies among English-learners.

The Colorado Attorney General’s Office then issued an opinion in 2014 stating students who receive literacy instruction in English and Spanish may be assessed in any board-approved assessment for determining reading deficiencies. The new revisions are consistent with that opinion.


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