Colorado has led the nation in supporting the success of all Coloradans, enacting bold policies, and continuing to build a Colorado for all. These efforts have all been informed by robust stakeholder engagement paired with data analysis. Various initiatives over the years have improved the state's ability to use data to inform these goals. With…

Extensive teacher mobility can undermine policy efforts to develop a high-quality workforce. In response, policymakers have increasingly championed financial incentives to retain teachers. In 2006, the Denver Public Schools adopted an alternative teacher compensation reform, the Professional Compensation System for Teachers ("ProComp").…

As public schools, charter schools are legally required to educate all students regardless of the difficulties they bring with them into the classroom. Nonetheless, many are concerned that the charter sector fails to educate all comers. Charter schools are often criticized for not enrolling similar proportions of students with disabilities as are…

The Pittsburgh Promise is a scholarship program that provides $5,000 per year toward college tuition for public high school graduates in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who earned a 2.5 GPA and a 90% attendance record. This study used a difference-in-difference design to assess whether the introduction of the Promise scholarship program directly…

The Early Learning Challenge (ELC) program awarded more than $1 billion in four-year grants to 20 States to implement comprehensive and cohesive high-quality early learning systems that support young children with high needs and their families. A key lever in making these improvements was the enhancement of States' Quality Rating and Improvement…

The purpose of this study was to examine postsecondary readiness for 17,499 Colorado students by exploring the congruence between middle school and high school state assessment results (Colorado State Assessment Program) from 2007, ACT results from 2008 and the need for remediation for Colorado students who graduated from high school in the spring…

Response to intervention (RTI) arose, in part, from the limited success of the pre-referral process, an approach advocated in the 1980s and 1990s, and accurately measuring the discrepancy between aptitude and achievement in young children. Reflecting these concerns, when the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was reauthorized in…