“Let’s Get Ready!” This is the headline for Gov. Jared Polis’ roadmap for governors across the nation to prepare kids — not for life, exactly, but for college and work. “Success” is the ultimate goal. “Success” means community well-being and U.S. economic competitiveness with education as the basis for this achievement.

The governor’s roadmap for every child’s contribution to economic competitiveness begins as early as preschool. “Investment in the youngest learners pays dividends for states.” Early childhood education sparks “short-term economic growth and upward economic mobility for families.” How is that possible? It’s not because the kids themselves generate money. It’s because getting young kids to early childhood learning centers allows low-income parents to “return to the labor force and make a better life for their families in the short and long run.”

That notion is a mixed bag, as some politicians would rather moms stay home with their children. President Donald Trump wants families to have more children! But if families have more children, especially if they’re low income, more tax dollars will have to go into early childhood education. Those dollars compete with other compelling social needs for low-income families, such as for health care, food, housing and transportation. The cost of children for taxpayers starts adding up.

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Much of Polis’ report focuses on upward mobility and how it occurs. That emphasis takes us to K-12 grades and the effect of poverty on learners. The governor cites research from The New Teachers Project. “Just 1 in 10 young people experiencing poverty had experiences that led to strong academic outcomes, one-third the rate of their academic peers.” If we think about it, those numbers for both cohorts don’t look too good.

Notably, reading and math are the nation’s academic foundations. More specifically, if a kid is good in math, that child will probably “succeed” later on. According to research by the Urban Institute cited in the report, “math scores in childhood were highly predictive of future earnings.”

Obviously, it would be nice for kids and great for the nation if all children had high enough math scores on their standardized tests. Data from ChatGPT AI shows about 90,000 students receive bachelor’s degrees in math, economics and physics annually. The nation’s colleges and universities grant more than 2 million degrees annually.

Clearly, math is not a passion for all students in public schools or higher education. Some prefer history, painting, psychology, guitar, basketball, car mechanics, social work, woodworking, etc. They want to be super-good in those areas. But those learning fields apparently don’t produce national “economic competitiveness” which is the governor’s most prominent marker for “success.” Consequently, those fields are not integrated into the governor’s roadmap.

The report states one way for the nation to determine future student and national success is through standardized testing and academic metrics. If children aren’t meeting academic goals, they should receive “targeted support.” The governor asserts help should lead to “measurable and sustained impacts on student learning.”

We’ve known for decades “high-impact tutoring and effective educator professional development” help struggling students. This is not new. What’s been the hold-up? Most recently, the Trump administration has been the hold-up when it sat on $70 million for Colorado’s school district programs for English Language Learning students, teacher professional development, and intensive tutoring.

One insight of the report is governors do need a wider set of metrics to measure student readiness. Polis would include social skills necessary for success in the workplace as well as civic education for community well-being. As has occurred for decades, he encourages partnering with employers to “shape our approach to education.” A review of financial supporters of his initiative, including Walmart and Amazon, two of the largest employers in the nation, reveals whom he considers critical to his initiative. These two enterprises are well known for their commitment to career paths and excellent wages.

With Walmart behind the initiative, the governor should certainly include athletics as a marker for “success,” especially as related to basketball, hockey, football and soccer. Everyone in Colorado can get behind that.

The implementation of the governor’s roadmap in Colorado needs some work. The state has underfunded public schools by more than $10 billion for a decade-and-a-half. Gov. Polis has not taken steps to remedy this school finance debacle. In last year’s school finance budget, he wangled a “fix” for the state’s $1 billion deficit that would have radically undercut financing for districts with declining enrollment. That’s most of the districts in the state. The legislature rejected much of his “solution.”

The 2025-2026 school year looks even grimmer. Even so, our governor has not supported any changes to the state’s taxing laws to relieve this public school funding catastrophe. In fact, he wants to cut income tax rates, which would greatly reduce state revenue used to finance the state’s public schools.

Will the governor’s road map find success in Colorado? He cites our state in a “case study.” Based on his most used success metric, academic achievement, the answer, unfortunately and untidily, is no. As a state, we’re apparently destined for the dust heap.

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.