The Foster Care Success Act (House Bill 22-1374) provides funds to both the Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) and the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) to improve the educational attainment of students in out-of-home placement. The Act requires CDE to identify specific goals for its Foster Care Education Program (FCEP) to achieve…

This report details the activities of the Educator Recruitment and Retention Financial Assistance Program (ERR Program) created pursuant to Senate Bill 21-185 (C.R.S. 22-60.3-201 et seq.). Developed in response to persistent educator shortages across the state, the ERR Program removes or reduces a potential barrier to entry into education: the…

This is the third paper on the topic of outcomes-based funding written by Dennis Jones for Complete College America. The first paper, "Performance Funding: From Idea to Action" (ED535356), proposed a set of design and implementation principles to help states develop and implement their own outcomes-based funding models. The second paper,…

In 2004 Colorado passed legislation enacting the nation's first voucher-based approach to financing higher education, known as the College Opportunity Fund (COF). The work of an unusual coalition that included higher education leaders, generally conservative policymakers, and others, COF completely replaced the traditional approach of subsidizing…

In cities and towns across America, millions of children and youth get out of school by mid-afternoon but have neither a safe, supervised place to go nor a structured or engaging activity in which to participate. Because the hours between 3:00 and 6:00 p.m. are when young people are most likely to be affected by crime or to engage in risky…

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…

The report summarizes an evaluation of Colorado's English Language Proficiency Act (ELPA) program for 1996-97. ELPA provides partial support for programs for limited-English-proficient elementary and secondary school students for a maximum of 2 years per student. It is noted that while the number of students eligible for the ELPA program has…

This report describes the best practices described by national experts, some of the actions that are currently being taken by Colorado institutions of higher education and recommendations for improving programs to retain and graduate minority and low-income students. Over the course of the taskforce's meetings, it became clear that Colorado's…