Historic Legislation to Equitably Fund Public Charter Schools Passes Colorado General Assembly

Business community applauds legislators for putting kids before politics

For immediate release

May 10, 2017 Denver, Colorado – In a momentous victory for public charter school students and their families, Colorado became one of the first states in the nation today to provide public charter schools equitable access to locally-raised tax revenue – funds which all public school students are entitled to.

“Today, Colorado ends the discriminatory funding practices that are hurting kids across our state,” said Scott Laband, President of Colorado Succeeds, a non-partisan business coalition focused on education issues. “This is a historic victory for the 43,000 charter school students who have been told for far too long that they are worth less than their peers simply because of the type of school they attend,”

“Over the last 24 years, public charter schools have become part of the fabric of Colorado’s education system – educating thousands of students statewide and delivering impressive results for kids. This measure will level the playing field for public charter students and help ensure every child receives the best possible education at the school of their choosing,” said Laband.

“Let’s be clear, addressing the funding inequities faced by public charter schools is about kids – not the misinformation and politics that some want to use to distort the issue. The business community applauds the General Assembly for putting politics aside and putting kids first,” added Laband.

Despite numerous attacks and campaigns to spread misinformation about charter schools and the students they serve, the facts remain clear:

  • Colorado charter schools are tuition-free public schools that are open to all students.
  • Colorado charters schools serve a population that mirrors the diversity of traditional schools.
  • Colorado charter schools are held accountable for student performance just like traditional schools. In fact, charters are often held accountable to additional performance metrics agreed to in their local district contract. 
  • Colorado charter schools are among some of the highest performing in the state. Recent research found that, of Colorado’s schools that are high-performing and serve a majority of low-income students, over 70 percent are charter schools.
  • If combined into one district, Colorado charter schools would be the largest in the state and serve nearly 115,000 students. 

Thanks to the tremendous leadership of HB-1375’s bipartisan sponsors - Senator Owen Hill, Senator Angela Williams, Representative Brittany Pettersen, and Representative Lang Sias - Colorado is one of the first states in the nation to ensure equitable funding for public charter schools.

 

Colorado Succeeds is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition of Colorado’s business leaders who join forces to ensure our education system works better and smarter for all people of Colorado. We believe Colorado is the best place to live and work, and we want it to stay that way. This great state can only continue its tradition of excellence when all of our children are educated to their greatest potential and all of our businesses have the talented and innovative workforce they need to thrive. We believe great schools are good business. We know when Colorado schools improve, everybody wins. Learn more: www.coloradosucceeds.org.

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Shannon Nicholas

Director of Communications and Programs

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Western Pathways Conference Advances Education and Workforce Opportunities

Congratulations and thank you to everyone who contributed to making the 2017 Western Pathways Conference in Denver a success. 

Over 350+ people spoke at and attended the conference's events, exploring new educational options and workforce development opportunities.

Colorado Business Roundtable was honored to be a part of helping everyone make the event possible. Thanks again to everyone that made this possible.


It wasn't all that long ago that "college for all" was the all-too-frequently repeated mantra prescribed to universally improve students' career options and improve the skills available to companies. It sounds like a good idea, so it's easy to see why that has been a concept to rally behind. However, public policy economics is never so simple. In looking at the data and the actual results of various policies around the country, it is becoming ever more clear that this overly-simple approach has not been working for everyone. A new approach is needed to develop career pathways and a talented workforce.

While classic university degrees are still important and have their roles, many students today are coming out of the educational system in large amounts of debt and are unemployed -- or severely underemployed.

Companies too are often finding themselves unable to fill good-paying jobs because of the lack of skills in the workforce. And while this mismatch is currently a problem, there are boundless opportunities in applying better solutions. The conference covered all sorts of perspectives from academia, business, and government.  Through applying the lessons learned, attendees appear to be optimistic about the prospects of better serving students and companies.

Opening up educational options and partnering closer with employers to teach the skills needed seems to be the answer. From corporate training initiatives, to apprenticeships, to nimble niche-based entrepreneurial training courses, the Western Pathways Conference explored these best-practice concepts that are showing success.

One of the speakers, LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue, brought some interesting numbers from their professional social network's economic graph research. According to that data, the largest gaps here in Denver between companies hiring for jobs and candidates having the matchings qualifications appear to be in 1.) Health Care, 2.) Advanced Manufacturing, and 3.) Information Technologies.

What were your favorite aspects of and key-takeaways from the conference? Email us here

COBRT is still processing the audio from all the breakout sessions as well as the video from the presentations and interviews. In the meantime, please enjoy the following gallery from the first day of the conference:

The following gallery is from the second and third days of the conference:

 

Again, thanks to all the sponsors and volunteers that made this all possible: