By Randy Johnson

The rule of thumb in designing and building anything is form follows function — you always build for a clear and specific purpose. This principle holds true for structures, vehicles, applications, seemingly anything, other than many educational systems and government functions. During the next few months, Colorado has a powerful opportunity to reimagine and redesign key state offices in order to ensure every Coloradan has a clear and supported path to a career and employment.

Today, considering fewer than 30% of Colorado high school graduates will go on to earn any post-secondary credential — whether an associate degree (5%) or bachelor’s degree (18%), or a professional certificate — we are desperately lacking coherency. This is not to mention lacking coherencies for all of the students who never graduate, or the 300,000 adults in the state today without a high school diploma, which truly is the most basic workforce credential upon which all others stack. And considering the “Colorado Paradox” — we’re a state with a highly educated workforce due solely to the influx of educated workers rather than educating our own high school graduates —, there must be great urgency to recognize the economic bottom can fall-out at any moment should the jobs for highly educated workers start to leave.

There must also be great urgency to recognize, today, the economic bottom has already fallen out for so many of our under-prepared sons and daughters, our neighbors and friends, who trusted our systems to give them every opportunity to become productive citizens. What they needed most was a plan and an education that built real competency, real skills, giving them enough agency to shape their own career and life decisions, instead of having limited choices imposed on them because of what they did not learn.

Last May, Gov. Jared Polis used one of his most powerful tools, the gubernatorial pen, to sign an important Executive Order (EO 2025-006): Reimagining the Future of the Postsecondary Talent Development System in Colorado. This EO holds incredible potential to break down bureaucratic barriers, eliminate redundancies, and open opportunities for Coloradans each year. Gov. Polis, thank you for this action, and thank you for your bold leadership in moving recommendations for transformational change to legislative champions. Legislators, please move swiftly to enact changes that will strengthen our workforce, and redesign and align systems in recognition that all education is ultimately career education. Every Coloradan deserves the dignity, and the agency, that comes with having an employable skill or trade.

The enemy of bureaucracy and the status quo, is accountability. True accountability that requires unambiguous results in measuring the benefit to people. The question to guide the EO at hand, is: How are state systems ensuring Coloradans are prepared for and finding their way to meaningful careers? This is the function of a postsecondary talent development system, regardless of what it’s called, where every percentage point, in every data metric, represents people’s lives and their rate of success in finding career preparation.

In 2026, allow form to follow function.

Randy Johnson has more than 35 years of experience in education, with 18 years at Denver Public Schools. He is executive director of Emily Griffith Technical College, a role he has held since 2020. Emily Griffith is the postsecondary and adult education arm of Denver Public Schools.