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Senate Bill 22-192, titled Opportunities for Credential Attainment called on the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) to work collaboratively with other state agencies, institutions of higher education (IHEs), employers and other stakeholders to build 10 stackable credential pathways across five high-value, high-demand industries between 2023 and 2025. Stackable credential pathways are defined as "...a sequence of credentials earned through various means, including through assessment of prior learning, that may be accumulated over time and move an individual along a career pathway or up a career ladder." In addition to these 10 pathways, CDHE was to also develop a framework for evaluating the quality of non-degree credentials built into the pathways. The four stackable credential pathways in healthcare and software development were approved by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education in early June 2024. This report shares these pathways as well as recommendations from the industry-specific stakeholder leadership teams that built these pathways. This report also provides best practices in stackable credential pathways development as a guide to others as they work to develop thoughtful pathways from non-degree credentials through next-level education and career opportunities in additional industries and sectors.

Ignoring their own well-publicized calls to regulate AI development and to pause implementation of its applications, major technology companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Meta are racing to fend off regulation and integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into their platforms. The weight of the available evidence suggests that the current wholesale adoption of unregulated AI applications in schools poses a grave danger to democratic civil society and to individual freedom and liberty. Years of warnings and precedents have highlighted the risks posed by the widespread use of pre-AI digital technologies in education, which have obscured decision-making and enabled student data exploitation. Without effective public oversight, the introduction of opaque and unproven AI systems and applications will likely exacerbate these problems. This policy brief explores the harms likely if lawmakers and others do not step in with carefully considered measures to prevent these extensive risks. The authors urge school leaders to pause the adoption of AI applications until policymakers have had sufficient time to thoroughly educate themselves and develop legislation and policies ensuring effective public oversight and control of school applications.

Housing, land use, and zoning policies are often siloed in such a way that they are considered and addressed separately from school segregation and students' opportunities to learn. But these policy areas can interact in powerful ways. This policy brief attempts to break down those siloes. Drawing on multiple bodies of literature, it explores what we know about the potential of housing and land use policy reform to address school segregation--and why doing so matters. The research reviewed here illuminates the close historical and legal relationship between school and housing segregation and the clear links between land use policy and school and housing segregation. Studies also show that where land use or housing reforms have enabled greater access to less segregated schools, historically marginalized students' outcomes have improved. The brief concludes with recommendations for policymakers to offer pathways to diverse, well-resourced schools for historically marginalized families, along with oversight and enforcement that considers school-housing interrelationships.

In the 2023 report "Colorado's Longitudinal Data Landscape. Report to the Education Committees of the Colorado House of Representatives and the Colorado Senate. Statute: 23-1-141," the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) provided a detailed overview of Colorado's long history of efforts to support more connected, longitudinal data along with examples from other states and their efforts around longitudinal data. The report also provided national best practices related to state longitudinal data systems. This year's report provides updates on CDHE's work over the past year, elevates specific use cases that can benefit from a more robust longitudinal data infrastructure and provides concrete actions Colorado policymakers can take to strengthen work around longitudinal data.

In April 2022, HB22-1255, "Concerning Measures to Improve Postsecondary Education Outcomes for Students with Disabilities" was signed into law by Governor Jared Polis. This is the first statewide report to include data on students with disabilities (SWDs). Colorado colleges and universities needed to develop processes and procedures to capture the data in a reportable fashion. To do so was a coordinated effort amongst many departments and divisions at the institutions as well as with the CDHE. As a result, conversations are ongoing as to how to best and most accurately capture the number of students with disabilities enrolled at the state's colleges and universities. Further, as this is the first required report and institutions of higher education (IHEs) were not previously collecting these data in a reportable fashion, the "available data" requested in the act could not yet include fall to fall retention numbers as well as graduation numbers. Additionally, this first report was a pilot data collection solicited via a spreadsheet from each IHE. In the future, the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) will include SWD in the Student Unit Record Data System (SURDS) which allows data analysis (as available) listed in the act.

Since 2010, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association's (SHEEO) Strong Foundations survey has reported on the evolution and value of postsecondary student unit record systems (PSURSs) by illuminating the condition of state postsecondary data in the U.S. In the "Strong Foundations 2023" survey, which was administered from February through March of 2023, SHEEO asked about the numbers of PSURSs existing in states, the types of data state postsecondary agencies are collecting in their PSURSs, their connections to other state agency data systems and state longitudinal data systems (SLDSs), and the value of those data to inform and improve state goals and student outcomes. Seventy-three SHEEO member and non-member agencies from all 50 states and the District of Columbia responded to the survey. As expected, PSURSs connections with K-12 and workforce agency data systems were among the most reported connections; yet there are growing connections with other state agencies, including health and human services, foster care, and corrections agencies. The most commonly reported barriers to efficient data sharing between agencies included data privacy concerns, coordination with other state authorities and administrators, lack of time for agency staff to link and analyze shared data, a lack of common identifiers and crosswalks, and a lack of fiscal resources. Among the new data elements SHEEO included for reporting this year are tribal affiliation, student parent/caregiver status, foster care status, refugee status, justice system involvement, and other data elements about historically underrepresented groups in higher education. The highlights in this report underscore the significance PSURSs have in improving mandated reporting, informing state goals and student outcomes, bolstering communication with stakeholders, creating greater transparency and trust, and garnering support and funding.

The Innovation Schools Act of 2008, § 22-32.5-102, et seq. C.R.S., was designed to provide a pathway for schools and districts to develop and implement innovative practices in a wide variety of areas and contexts to improve student outcomes. The Act provides a formal process that allows schools or groups of schools to make requests to their local school boards for waivers from district-level policies and for school boards to make requests to the Colorado State Board of Education for waivers from state-level laws and regulations. The Act enables schools to better provide educational services tailored to meet the needs of their student populations. Innovation schools are required to articulate a vision around the autonomies they are seeking, as well as to gain support from a variety of stakeholders, including teachers, administrators, and School Accountability Committee members, before receiving the innovation school designation. The innovation application process (see Appendix A) requires schools to think through the common goal and vision that will be made possible by receiving greater autonomy, as well as to identify the policies and documents that will need to change when these innovations are implemented. In compliance with the requirements of § 22-32.5-111, C.R.S., the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) has prepared this annual report divided into the following parts: (1) Overview of the Innovation Schools Act; (2) Current Demographics of Innovation Schools; (3) Description of the Innovations Implemented; (4) Summary of the Academic Performance of Innovation Schools; and (5) Recommendations for Legislative Changes. This report builds on the format from previous years, which typically includes a more detailed section regarding the academic performance of innovation schools and innovation school zones. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, state assessments in 2020 were suspended and the corresponding data is not available. For the 2020-21 school year, state assessments were administered to a limited number of grade levels. In the 2021-22 school year, state assessments were administered, and the corresponding data is included in this report. Similar to overall statewide trends, rates of participation in state assessments in 21-22 were still lower than in 2019 and should be considered when reviewing summary statistics.

"Discriminatory censorship laws" regulate classroom conversations about racism, gender identity, and other topics targeted in the backlash against efforts toward inclusive classrooms and curricula. This policy brief examines the proliferation of these laws and their impact on K-12 schools, including the creation of hostile learning environments that expose students and educators to a heightened threat of race- and sex-based harassment and to formal sanctions and social ostracization. The laws also foster a climate of fear and anxiety among educators, effectively coercing them to shun critical inquiry and thought on targeted topics and more generally. The result is a curriculum that subtracts comprehensive, culturally attentive content and adds whitewashed and heteronormative narratives of American history and culture. The brief highlights the need for laws, policies, and practices that promote inclusive learning environments that encourage critical thinking, and offers recommendations to constructively counter discriminatory censorship.

We present foundation language models developed to power Apple Intelligence features, including a ~3 billion parameter model designed to run efficiently on devices and a large server-based language model designed for Private Cloud Compute. These models are designed to perform a wide range of tasks efficiently, accurately, and responsibly. This report describes the model architecture, the data used to train the model, the training process, how the models are optimized for inference, and the evaluation results. We highlight our focus on Responsible AI and how the principles are applied throughout the model development.

Generative Artificial Intelligence has grown exponentially as a result of Large Language Models (LLMs). This has been possible because of the impressive performance of deep learning methods created within the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and its subfield Natural Language Generation (NLG), which is the focus of this paper. Within the growing LLM family are the popular GPT-4, Bard and more specifically, tools such as ChatGPT have become a benchmark for other LLMs when solving most of the tasks involved in NLG research. This scenario poses new questions about the next steps for NLG and how the field can adapt and evolve to deal with new challenges in the era of LLMs. To address this, the present paper conducts a review of a representative sample of surveys recently published in NLG. By doing so, we aim to provide the scientific community with a research roadmap to identify which NLG aspects are still not suitably addressed by LLMs, as well as suggest future lines of research that should be addressed going forward.

The Understanding Children's Transitions from Head Start to Kindergarten (HS2K) Project was a multi-year project funded by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation. The purpose of this project was to better understand how to improve children's transitions from Head Start programs to elementary schools. The transition to kindergarten occurs within and between two distinct systems (early care and education [ECE] and K-12 education) that each work under their own governance structures, philosophies, and accountability metrics. Specifically, this project aimed to explore the definition of "successful transitions" from a multi-level and systemic perspective. Within the context of this project, the focus is on one type of ECE program--Head Start. Head Start is embedded within a broader "ECE system" that includes many other types of programs, including state-funded pre-k, child care, home-based care, friend and family care, and privately-funded centers. This report details findings from one component of the HS2K Project -- a comparative multi-case study of five Head Start and Local Education Agency (LEA) partnerships, including their families, Head Start teachers and leaders, kindergarten teachers, elementary school leaders, LEA leaders, and community partners. The case-specific descriptions should be read as in-depth illustrations of the inner workings of kindergarten transition processes as they existed and were implemented in context at the time of data collection.

Summit Public Schools (SPS), a California-based charter school network established in 2003, is widely promoted nationally as a success story to be emulated. A policy environment friendly to charter schools and digital technologies, together with hundreds of millions of dollars in technology industry contributions, enabled its growth and its national visibility. Because of SPS's boasts of success and its national prominence, understanding its story is a useful way to gain insight into how Silicon Valley funds and markets education initiatives. It also reveals inadequacies in policy related to school performance, digital educational programs, protection of student data, and school funding. This research brief analyzes the documents SPS provided in response to a request for public records bearing on its reports of students' academic success, its curriculum and instruction program, its proprietary digital platform, its protection of student data, its funding, and the validity and reliability of its assessments. In its discussion of documents both provided and not provided, the authors illustrate how SPS serves as an example of how nominally nonprofit charter school organizations evade public oversight and provide technology companies and their investors with both a market for their products and a continually renewing source of valuable data from young people.

Senate Bill 19-129, concerning the regulation of online schools, calls for the Colorado Department of Education's Office of Online and Blended Learning to produce an annual report on the number of students who withdraw from Colorado K-12 online schools after the pupil enrollment count date. This report is required to include the dates on which students withdrew from enrollment in a Colorado online school, the grade level at which the students were enrolled at the beginning of the school year, the grade levels at which the students were enrolled when the students transferred, and information on whether the students enrolled in another public or private school or home-based education (home school) setting or graduated or completed high school within the same year. This report includes information and data for the 2020-2021 school year. During the 2020-2021 school year, 5,503 students were coded as withdrawing from an online school after the October Count. Based on an analysis of the 2020-2021 data for students enrolled in both types of online schools, the three most widely assigned exit codes were for: (1) students withdrawing and transferring to a school in another school district (n=1,548); (2) students dropping out (n=1,171); and (3) students transferring to a non-public home-based education setting (home school) (n=956).

When either privileged or under-resourced families navigate gray areas in the law, including federal laws related to students with disabilities such as Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, inequities are revealed. Research and emerging trends have raised increasing concerns about unfairness and abuses of disability policies, particularly with regard to intersectional disadvantages and advantages that may emerge in the implementation of Section 504, depending on a student's social identities. In this policy brief, the authors present research that should inform policymaking around Section 504. They also consider the trends documenting ongoing and even increasing inequities in how the law is being used. Because many of these inequities are systemic, they provide recommendations that include policy actions at the federal, state, and local levels.

This report follows the high school graduating class of 2021 into their first year of college. While the data reveals areas that require attention, it is important to recognize successes: (1) A slight increase in students enrolled in Concurrent Enrollment (programs that follow statute guidelines and offer college courses tuition-free to high school students); (2) All students enrolled in Concurrent Enrollment in the 2020/2021 academic year potentially saved $50 million in tuition costs; (3) 3.5% earned postsecondary credentials while in high school -- a slight decrease from the year previous but much higher than in 2009 (0.34%); (4) Students assessed as needing developmental education courses have decreased significantly -- there is also a decrease in the number of students enrolled in standalone developmental education courses; and (5) Colorado higher education provides good support once students enroll. Persistence rates increased slightly (just under 80%) -- higher than the national average of 75.6%. These and other successes can be used as momentum to address the areas that need attention. Just under 50% of high school graduates attended an institution of higher education in the fall after graduation. The concern adds to the weight of the upcoming enrollment cliff - projections of a nationwide drop in enrollment of the college-age population beginning in 2025. Further, the cliff has resulted in colleges outside of Colorado increasingly recruiting the state's graduates -- 29% of high school graduates enrolled in a college or university in another state -- a 4% increase and the highest rate ever.

School ratings are a ubiquitous feature of the U.S. educational system. Alongside state-mandated measures of school performance, non-state organizations such as GreatSchools.org and Niche have created consumer-oriented systems of school ratings that draw on publicly available information about schools. Claiming the purpose of their rating systems is to help families navigate increasingly complex school choice options, these organizations present their ratings as authoritative sources of information. In the growing evidence base about consumer-oriented systems, there is consistent research showing that the measures that comprise school ratings are associated with schools' demographic characteristics, such as students' race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. This brief examines these consumer-oriented rating systems and their implications for educational equity, and provides recommendations to minimize potential harms.

State postsecondary education data systems are vital assets for policymakers, researchers, and the public. The State Higher Education Executive Officers Association's (SHEEO) Communities of Practice project builds upon SHEEO's efforts to measure the capacity and effective use of state postsecondary data systems and provides states with opportunities to develop solutions to common system issues. The seventh Community of Practice convening, "Improving Equity and Opportunity through Postsecondary Data," was held September 28-29, 2022, in Denver, Colorado. The two-day meeting included more than 80 representatives from 17 states: Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai'i, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Washington, and the District of Columbia. Teams included representatives from SHEEO agency academic affairs, workforce, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and research and data offices and their partners at state agencies and two- and four-year postsecondary institutions. Given the recent impacts on higher education from the COVID-19 pandemic, social justice unrest, and economic pressures facing the country, a focus on equity and opportunity was timely for this Community of Practice. SHEEO agency staff communicated a need to inform state attainment and economic goals through improved collection and use of postsecondary student unit record data. Within and across state teams, Community of Practice attendees were able to learn more about the nuances and impacts of equity-and opportunity-focused data collection, disaggregation, and visualization; to better understand how to effectively communicate and illustrate the need for and the contributions of equitable student success in their states; and to reflect on their capacity, partnerships, and resources available to effectively engage in this work. In this paper, SHEEO shares the presentations, resources, and team activities from the convening. This information can be used by SHEEO agencies to reflect on their current practices, plan and develop effective data policies, and better use data to improve postsecondary equity and opportunity outcomes in their states.

House Bill 21-1010 tasked the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) and the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) to convene a workgroup dedicated to identifying obstacles to increasing the diversity of Colorado's educator workforce and to develop recommendations for meeting the challenge. This report is a result of the workgroup's effort. The report's recommendations build on those from 2017's Colorado's Teacher Shortages strategic plan (ED586422), and the 2014 report Keeping Up With the Kids. Recommended strategies include investing in "grow your own" strategies and addressing long-standing concerns about compensation; providing mentorship opportunities for aspiring teachers and investing in preparation programs at colleges and universities serving students of color and supporting districts to implement culturally relevant and sustainable practices to address implicit bias and microaggressions in the classroom and workplace. This report continues to underscore the importance of clear and focused support on recruiting, preparing, and retaining a diverse educator workforce. There is no single, statewide solution to the challenge. Instead, there are multiple possible solutions tailored to fit the assets and needs of different communities and different parts of the state. It is the shared belief of workgroup members that all Colorado students will benefit from being served by educators that resemble the racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of the community. [This report was prepared by the House Bill 21-1010 Diversity Workgroup.]

In this study, we introduce a parametric function designed to describe the energy distribution of the observed particle within the framework of two-body decays involving one undetected particle, analyzed using the pseudo-rest frame approximation. While we illustrate its effectiveness through the specific case study of the Lepton Flavor Violating decay $\tau \rightarrow l+\alpha$, this parametric function is broadly applicable to a wide range of pseudo-rest frame method-related searches involving undetected particles. Remarkably, it requires only a single simulation to account for the smearing effects resulting from the pseudo-rest frame approximation. The uniqueness of this function lies in its dependency on the mass of the undetected particle, enabling continuous exploration of the mass parameter space. We validate the performance of our parametric function using simulated datasets and find that it exhibits comparable performance to traditional simulation-based methods. Notably, our approach offers the distinct advantage of accommodating any mass value for the undetected particle without the need for multiple simulations., Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures

Schools should be safe places for young people, educators, school staff, and community members, and policies and practices can help create learning environments where kids thrive. Gun violence in U.S. schools has prompted calls for increased school safety measures; however, which policies contribute to safe school environments is often a topic of debate. How can schools create safe environments while also fostering welcoming, equitable school climates that support growth, learning, and community? To help Colorado policymakers and school communities answer this question, the Colorado Children's Campaign has identified and compiled research on strategies that are supported by strong evidence. While school safety can be defined broadly as freedom from physical, emotional, and psychological violence, this brief focuses on promoting freedom from bodily harm in a school setting. Strategies that support students' well-being and prevent bullying, fighting, the use of weapons, and other types of violence can contribute to reducing harm. [Leslie Colwell, Megan Ives, Erica Manoatl, and Jackie Zubrzycki contributed to this report.]

The report provides detailed information on policies and practices that differ between two-year and four-year public institutions. It also includes specific information about the tuition-setting process for graduate students, details on state policies for setting nonresident student tuition, and more information on state policies regarding student fees. The enhanced data includes more specific information on the years in which each state had tuition freezes and/or limitations, the institution types subjected to those limits, and the amount of those limits. While the report does not provide actual tuition costs, it focuses on the policies that establish and regulate tuition, fees, and financial aid amounts.

This report focuses on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on state tuition, fee, and financial aid policies for public institutions of higher education. The COVID-19 pandemic impacted several areas of state policy--most significantly through increased funding to state budgets. For higher education, states received federal funding that they allocated directly to higher education. Some states used these federal funds to protect existing state financial aid programs and initiatives, while others used funding to pilot new programs. Since 2003, the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) State Tuition, Fees, and Financial Assistance Policies survey has asked state agencies about how economic conditions have impacted policies on tuition and fees. The 2022 survey covers the period from 2018 through 2022, providing a unique opportunity to include questions on the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the report's highlights are the innovative financial assistance programs reported by state agencies surveyed, including changes made to tuition rate setting, tuition relief, and financial aid policies. [For the "State Tuition, Fees, and Financial Assistance Policies 2022" report, see ED631012.]

Building Understanding: Youth Mental Health and Well-Being in Colorado, the 2023 edition of "KIDS COUNT in Colorado!," spotlights trends in youth mental health and access to care. It includes an overview of the most recent data on the topic and offers recommendations for policy action to promote youth mental health in the years ahead. The 30th annual "KIDS COUNT in Colorado!" report also tracks the well-being of Colorado children statewide and at the county level in the areas of family economic prosperity, child and family health, early childhood learning and development, and youth success. The report highlights promising programs and efforts to support youth mental health across the state. It also features insights from young people as part of a partnership with the YouthScan Project, a statewide digital initiative that puts youth voices front and center in the decisions that impact their lives. "KIDS COUNT" in Colorado! is part of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's national "KIDS COUNT" project. "KIDS COUNT" serves as an important source of quality, unbiased information on children and families for decision-makers and child advocates. [For the 2022 report, see ED626370.]

The Tuition and Fee Report is produced annually by the Colorado Department of Higher Education to provide detailed information on the tuition and fee rates at Colorado's public institutions, as well as to give context regarding the state funding environment in which tuition and fee rate-setting occurs. Colorado has mirrored national trends over the past fifteen years as the cost of higher education has shifted from the state to the student. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2000-01, the state covered 68 percent of the cost of college, while students and families were responsible for 32 percent. By FY 2011-12, the balance had effectively reversed, leaving students and families responsible for two-thirds of the costs while the state paid a third. This shifting funding structure comes at a time when a postsecondary credential has become an economic necessity. The Colorado Commission on Higher Education's Master Plan, Colorado Rises, establishes as an overarching goal increasing the number of adults who hold a high-quality postsecondary credential to 66 percent by 2025. This attainment goal recognizes research suggesting almost three-fourths of jobs now require some education beyond high school. Colorado has mirrored the nation in moving from a model of funding primarily supported by state appropriations to one that considers all sources of revenue, including resident and nonresident tuition and fees. From FY 2021-22 to FY 2022-23, resident tuition and fees increased an average of 3.7 percent across all of Colorado's public institutions. At four-year institutions, the average increase was 4.5 percent, and at two-year institutions, the average was 2.2 percent. This year, the report highlights limited or flat tuition across many of the state's institutions, demonstrating the commitment of both the state and institutions to contain costs. [For the 2021-22 report, see ED617356.]

Colorado has led the nation in supporting the success of all Coloradans, enacting bold policies, and continuing to build a Colorado for all. These efforts have all been informed by robust stakeholder engagement paired with data analysis. Various initiatives over the years have improved the state's ability to use data to inform these goals. With support from historic investments in revitalizing the state's workforce, Colorado has an opportunity to leverage data in well-governed, responsible ways to elevate evidence-based decision-making and support these goals to become reality. This report serves as a background on the Colorado longitudinal data landscape, with a special focus on Colorado's status and opportunities. The report will guide on-going conversations on data integration and Colorado's efforts toward a Longitudinal Data System (LDS). With a LDS, policymakers and other decisionmakers in other states have answered questions, such as: (1) How many high school graduates go directly to jobs?; (2) What is the workforce supply for industry jobs?; (3) How can we better predict our economic indicators at the local level?; and (4) What might be the impact of health care and service needs over time? The report provides a brief description of Longitudinal Data Systems (LDS), including what they are, what data lies within them, how they can be used, and their benefits. The report also highlights efforts in other states where more coordinated and aligned systems have been successful. The report also includes recommendations related to greater democratization of data, following national best practices, and more alignment of Colorado's current landscape.

Today's youth suffer through challenges on multiple fronts. Alongside the COVID-19 pandemic and its related social and educational fallout, they've experienced trauma from increasingly frequent school and community violence, homelessness, family separation related to immigration, and sustained child poverty. Exposure to these and other traumas triggers health, psychological, social-emotional, behavioral, and educational harms. In response, and as part of efforts to increase holistic support for students, educators and policymakers have sought to implement educational practices that increase awareness of and responsiveness to the impact of trauma while preventing future trauma. This policy brief explores both the promise and challenges of trauma-informed education, suggesting that it may be best designed as a systemwide commitment, rather than an intervention, and that the concept of equity-centered trauma-informed education may offer a productive path to addressing the conceptual and implementation challenges involved.

C.R.S. 24-33.5-1905 (4) directs the Department of Higher Education (DHE, the Department) to prepare a report detailing progress made towards critical state cyber-security goals at institutions of higher education that received an appropriation through SB 18-086. Specifically, the report must include, at a minimum: (1) The number of faculty or adjunct faculty hired at each institution of higher education as a result of the funding; (2) The number of student internships created with the funding at each institution of higher education; (3) The number of degrees or certificates that have been awarded at each institution of higher education in connection with the funding; (4) The number of scholarships awarded at each institution in connection with the funding; (5) The number of presentations and seminars given on cybersecurity by each institution of higher education; and (6) The amount of all other money that has been raised to match the state investment, which may include tuition, fees, federal funds, and industry donations. Six governing boards were awarded funding in the 2020-2021 fiscal year. This report summarizes their spending.

The last several years have been trying for students, communities, and schools. As states and local educational agencies work to meet the significant health and educational needs of students, and address the vast racial and socioeconomic inequities that have been heightened by the pandemic, the federal role in education is critical. Because the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) remains the government's most consequential mechanism to promote equity in public education, the upcoming reauthorization of the law's latest version, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), presents an opportunity to re-envision this federal role in promoting access to quality educational opportunities. In this brief, the authors describe an equitable, evidence-based, and ecological civil rights framework to guide the redesign of ESSA. It places students, staff, school systems, and cross-sector collaboration at the center of ESEA and considers the complexity of racial, socioeconomic, and other inequities along with the strengths nested within communities.

How students learn to read and how reading is best taught are often the focus of media, public, and political criticism. The contemporary reading reform movement is the latest chapter of a long history of controversies, dating from at least the early 20th century. Throughout the decades, attention has focused on how teachers teach reading (typically including specific concern for phonics instruction), standardized test scores (including international comparisons), and a changing list of hypothetical causes for disappointing test scores (including progressivism, whole language, and balanced literacy). This policy brief explores the controversial history of the reading reform movement, and provides recommendations for state and local policymakers to provide teachers the flexibility and support necessary to adapt their teaching strategies to specific students' needs.

Colorado, like other states across the country, utilizes various strategies to provide students with opportunities to achieve college credit in high school and cultivate seamless P-20 pathways to increase credential completion. For example, Colorado students take rigorous courses in high school through the Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) programs that can lead to college credit. Concurrent Enrollment allows high school students to enroll in college-level courses, simultaneously earning both high school and college credit tuition free. Local Education Providers (LEPs) participating in the state's Concurrent Enrollment program cover the student's tuition expenses up to the resident community college tuition rate. These programs help students develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to be postsecondary education- and workforce-ready. Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) and Colorado Department of Education (CDE) have prepared this report pursuant to statute (C.R.S. §22-35-112). The data, collected through the CDHE Student Unit Record Data System (SURDS), unless noted otherwise, provide a descriptive summary of students in Colorado's public education system who participated in dual enrollment programs in the 2020-2021 school year. [For the 2021 report, see ED614231.]

Building on the success of the Starobinsky model in describing the inflationary period of the universe, we investigate two simple generalizations of this model and their constraints imposed by the reheating epoch. The first generalization takes the form $R^{2p}$, while the second is the $\alpha$-Starobinsky model. We first focus on the case where $p=1$ or equivalently, $\alpha=1$, which corresponds to the original Starobinsky model. We derive exact consistency relations between observables and cosmological quantities, without neglecting any terms, and impose the reheating condition $0 < \omega_{re} < 0.25$, where $\omega_{re}$ is the equation of state parameter at the end of reheating. This allows us to obtain new bounds for $n_s$ and $r$ that satisfy this condition and apply them to other observables and cosmological quantities. We repeat this process for the cases where $p \neq 1$ and $\alpha \neq 1$ and find that these generalizations only result in minor modifications of the Starobinsky model, including the potential and the bounds on observables and cosmological quantities., Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in JCAP

The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 provided states with increased flexibility to design school accountability systems. A core element of the law is the requirement that states develop statewide systems allowing for meaningful differentiation among schools, and use this information to identify schools that should be the focus of improvement efforts. Individual states decide on the type of report card, or rating system, that they will use to report this information to the public. While states may take different approaches to measuring and reporting school performance, they have consistently chosen approaches of public reporting that collapse multiple school performance indicators into a summative rating. This policy brief discusses the difficulties that arise when states' school report cards use this summative-rating approach, and provides recommendations for resolving these challenges.

This report follows the high school graduating class of 2020 into their first year of college--high school seniors when the pandemic began. The initial impact of the pandemic on college-going pathways and outcomes is a focal point. While the data is concerning, there are successes: (1) Dual enrollment participation continues to increase; (2) More students of color are participating in dual enrollment; (3) Students are increasingly earning college credentials while in high school; (4) There is a continued decrease in the need for developmental education courses at community colleges due to policy reform; and (5) After multiple years of continued increases, first-year college GPA and course credits completed stayed at the same high level. These student successes can be built upon as the concerns revealed by the data are addressed. College-going rates for the 2020 graduates dropped almost 6%; students from small rural areas dropped 10%. Next year's report will reveal if some of these students took a gap year and chose to enroll the following year. To assist in moving equity efforts forward, the department appointed its first chief educational equity officer and created an Office of Education Equity. Integrating and aligning higher education with the workforce continues to be a primary focus, as well as instilling the profound value of a college credential for the future vitality of the individual and the community. This report explores both data trends and policy context related to critical pathways that Colorado's recent high school graduates pursue to a meaningful degree or credential. Specifically, it covers: (1) Pathways to a postsecondary credential in high school; (2) Pathways to enrolling in higher education; and (3) Pathways to success in higher education. Within each section, the report highlights partnerships designed to help more students succeed. Additionally, the report focuses on changing demographics and the importance of closing equity gaps for all populations. [For the 2021 report, see ED614155.]

This policy memo examines some fundamental shifts, along with their real-world implications, within the past 60 years of Supreme Court jurisprudence, up to and including the current "Carson v. Makin" case. The Supreme Court is just a few small steps away from transforming every charter school law in the U.S. into a private-school voucher policy. Further, the nation may be facing a future of religious organizations proselytizing through charter schools that have been freed from obeying anti-discrimination laws--with LGBTQ+ community members being the most likely victims.

Grow your own (GYO) programs are designed to recruit, prepare, and place community members as teachers in local schools. They do this through partnerships between educator preparation programs, school districts or local educational agencies, and community-based organizations. The nation is currently seeing new and thoughtful uses of the approach. This policy brief examines models with an explicit commitment to advancing justice and equity in teacher development, which can be leveraged to open doors to the profession for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) teachers with roots in, and understanding of, the community.

Transgender and nonbinary (collectively referred to here as "trans") students are ill-served by most school environments. They experience challenges trying to navigate institutions that, at best, are poorly designed to support them and that often work against them. Although some districts and states have developed laws and policies to improve students' experiences, many are either ill-conceived, ineffectively implemented, or reinforce restrictive and inflexible structures regulating gender. This brief explores these issues in depth and puts forth recommendations for policy and practice to create spaces in which transgender youth can fully engage with school.