Senate Bill 19-190 created the Teacher Mentor Grant Program within the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE). The purpose of this program is to provide funding to educator preparation programs (EPP) that partner with local education providers (LEP), including school districts, boards of cooperative services, and charter schools to provide…

Purpose of this study is to provide an estimate of concurrent enrollment (CE) costs and return on investment (ROI) in Colorado. This report is part of a larger U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (IES) funded grant to develop a college access and success research partnership (R305H170049). This study is of Colorado…

The burden of financing higher education has shifted from the state to the student since the turn of the century, both in Colorado and across the nation. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2000-01, the state covered 68 percent of a student's cost of higher education, while students and families were responsible for 32 percent. By FY 2011-12, those numbers had…

This report follows the high school graduating class of 2020 into their first year of college--high school seniors when the pandemic began. The initial impact of the pandemic on college-going pathways and outcomes is a focal point. While the data is concerning, there are successes: (1) Dual enrollment participation continues to increase; (2) More…

During the 2004 legislative session, the Colorado General Assembly enacted Senate Bill 189 (SB189), which established the first system of college vouchers in the United States. The supporters of SB189 hoped that the voucher system, called the College Opportunity Fund (COF), would: 1) stabilize the flow of state funding to higher education; 2)…

Many states are passing "free" college plans, and policymakers at both the state and federal level continue to debate the merits of national "free college" or "debt-free college" proposals, also known as Promise programs. Both federal and state "free" college proposals are geared toward a policy objective of…

This report provides six mini-case studies of higher education policy reforms enacted in other states, exploring the important role that state policy leadership played in developing, promoting, and implementing these policies aimed at improving higher education outcomes, and discussing the relevance of each reform effort for California. This…

In 2009, Excelencia in Education launched the Ensuring America's Future initiative to inform, organize, and engage leaders in a tactical plan to increase Latino college completion. An executive summary of Latino College Completion in 50 states synthesizes information on 50 state factsheets and builds on the national benchmarking guide. Each…

In 2005, Colorado lawmakers radically changed the state's higher education funding system. Until this point Colorado, like other states, had supported higher education by appropriating operating revenues to the institutions and providing some financial aid to low-income students. But in 2005, instead of giving the state's general funds for…

This report for the College Opportunity Fund (COF) covers the first two fiscal years of the COF program, FY05-06, FY06-07. It describes the implementation efforts of COF program stakeholders, the statistics of participation in the program, and concerns of the program. COF enables qualifying resident students to use higher education tuition…

Community colleges and baccalaureate and graduate degree granting institutions are active in school-to-career efforts in Colorado in a variety of ways. This document describes some School-to-Career initiatives at Colorado colleges, grouped according to three major educational objectives. The first is to infuse School-to-Career competencies and…

This report presents data and recommendations for the development of Colorado's system of higher education. It deals primarily with the public institutions. Chapter 1 assesses the needs for higher education in the state with regard to enrollment projections, distribution of the population, availability of extension courses, and the number of…

The Colorado Commission on Higher Education was created in 1965 to help provide a unified and long-range view of higher education in the state and help devise a structure of higher education that would be responsive to a changing educational system, social needs and pressures. This report, which reviews the history and functions of the Commission,…

Licensure standards ensure that the best and most promising candidates receive and retain educator licenses and that the training and professional development they experience contribute meaningfully to this end. These standards also assure that educators have the skills and knowledge needed to support students toward attaining high standards. This…