The K-12 System--An Argument for Parental Choice

We showed how Preschool is faring in the state a couple of weeks ago. Now we are showing you, amid all of the Department of Education conversations how Colorado's K-12 system is faring.

The first image shows a comparison between the nation and Colorado scores. It looks pretty good until we understand where the national average really lands us in terms of outcomes. The second image is showing the national outcomes. It is exceptionally difficult to come up with specific and clear data points for this comparison. The third image reflects a current Wildly Important Goal (WIG) that is established with the Department and the Governor's office. The fourth image shows the Governor's dashboard where WIG's are usually tracked. We are not finding CDE listed there though....you can look for yourself. There is a lot of interesting information on this site!

Things to notice? CDE collects data on students that ALMOST meet an expectation and do NOT reference them as "not yet meet expectations". The only column that matters is "Percent Met or exceeded Expectations". English is the strength in our system with just over half of our children falling short of grade level expectations. Math ranges from 26.3%-40.4% depending on the school year. The majority of the time only 1/3rd of our children are meeting expectations. In Science it's 33.9% in fifth grade declining to 24.6% in grade 11. Surely there are more WIG's (Wildly Important Goals) for CDE to improve the education of our children outside of the one listed above? We've provided you with links so that you can do some searching yourself.

Today's data can be found at:

https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/stt2024/pdf/2024220CO8.pdf

https://www.cato.org/publications/k-12-education

https://www.cde.state.co.us/communications/strategicplan2025-2028

https://www.cde.state.co.us/assessment/cmas-dataandresults-2023

https://dashboard.colorado.gov/department-reports

CDE Performance Plan 2024-2025

POST MODIFICATION 4/14/25: The Governor's office reached out and said that given that CDE is not a Principal department of the executive branch they do not have to develop WIGS in the same way as other state agencies. You can find annual reports here: https://operations.colorado.gov/performance-management/department-performance-plans/education