Colorado

Colorado Affiliate

Through the support and leadership of The Colorado Partnership for Educational Renewal (COPER); Colorado State University; The Public Education and Business Coalition; the Colorado Forum; the Education Commission of the States; the Colorado Association of School Boards; the Research and Development Center for the Advancement of Student Learning in Ft. Collins; and the Colorado Department of Education, JFTK - Colorado is helping schools across the state improve. Leadership and funding from the Colorado business community, including the Rose Community Foundation, the Rose Community Foundation, the Donnell-Kay Foundation, and the Governor's office are helping to make this a reality.

Contact:
Elizabeth Parmelee
Executive Director, COPER

For additional information on becoming a Just for the Kids state affiliate, click here.

District Services

District Best Practice Audit

Benchmarking your school system against Higher Performing Systems can provide useful direction for schools and districts in their strategic and improvement planning. Our audits benchmark your system against the Best Practice Framework, the result of studying nearly 500 consistently higher performing schools since 1999. We focus on the primary structures that support teaching and learning in Higher Performing Schools, based on our research. You can be confident that any recommendations will be based on school practices with demonstrated performance, rather than simply on theory.

Typical audit activities include: site visit interviews, observations, focus groups, document review, and Self-Audits (an online survey).

For previous client districts, these audits have provided powerful reviews for use in district-wide strategic planning and improvement processes, or for providing valuable "state-of-the-district" information for incoming superintendents.

Training

The Best Practice Framework provides a powerful tool for connecting various district-wide initiatives into a coherent improvement plan. We can design a customized professional development program that ties our School Services with your other district-wide initiatives. Previous client districts have used this service to provide targeted assistance to schools with significant needs, or in a particular feeder pattern, in order to develop common language and a common lens through which these schools can approach their school improvement work.

To find out more about our District Best Practice Audit or Training, contact us.