Author: Erica Meltzer CHALKBEAT COLORADO

NaTasha Montoya nearly gave up on working in the classroom. She spent five years as an elementary paraprofessional who also coached junior high girls basketball and worked an after-school tutoring gig, and she still only earned $19,000 a year – so she took a job as a shipping manager for a local firm in Rocky…

Nearly 90% of Colorado voters believe a college education is very or somewhat important, but almost that many – 83% – also believe public schools should be doing more to teach vocational and career skills. This was one of the greatest areas of agreement in a new survey of attitudes toward education that found Colorado…

Responding to a lawsuit filed by a teachers union, State Board of Education members on Tuesday defended their decision to hand over control of a struggling Pueblo school to a for-profit outside manager. Board Chair Angelika Schroeder and Vice-Chair Steve Durham issued joint statements a few days after the Pueblo Education Association, with the support…

Most Colorado parents will be able to send their children to free full-day kindergarten starting this fall. For years, Colorado has lagged behind other states in making kindergarten accessible. Colorado currently pays districts a little more than half the standard per-pupil rate for kindergarten students. While most kindergarten students already attend full-day programs, in many…

As Colorado’s 2019 legislative session came to a close, Gov. Jared Polis strode into a conference room packed with reporters to talk about his accomplishments, starting with education. “Have you heard us talk about full-day kindergarten ever?” the Democrat began, turning yet again to the issue he’s championed from the launch of his campaign to…

A proposed nicotine tax backed by Gov. Jared Polis was rejected by the Colorado Senate Thursday night. The proposal would have allowed Colorado to double its investment in state-funded preschool spots, as well as raised money for health care and enrichment programs for children from low-income families. To pay for these programs, voters would have…

A coalition of rural Colorado districts has spent four years building a parallel, unofficial school improvement system that looks beyond test scores and seeks to measure things like the quality of instruction and student attitudes toward learning. “We want data that helps us improve, and state data is not helping us do that,” said Lisa…

Colorado schools can expect a financial boost from changes to local property tax collections. The Public School Finance Act, expected to be introduced in the state Senate on Tuesday, will include an extra $23 million to reduce the state’s outstanding obligation to school districts, plus $30 million just for rural schools and $5 million for…

A Colorado bill that would require many early elementary teachers to undergo new training in reading instruction passed unanimously out of the Senate Education Committee on Thursday, but not before lawmakers and parent activists expressed concern that the proposal represents a meager effort against a massive problem: that roughly 60 percent of Colorado third-graders do…

A proposal that could have allowed Colorado to potentially invest hundreds of millions of dollars more into education by pushing some school districts to raise their taxes fizzled this year after the idea’s chief legislative advocate backed down. “I agonized over this because I truly believe fixing school finance depends on it,” said state Sen.…