REL Central is partnering with the Colorado Department of Education and the Colorado Department of Higher Education to advance priorities in Colorado’s 2025–2028 Strategic Plan, which focuses on increasing student engagement, improving outcomes, and strengthening the educator workforce. REL Central’s work includes helping the state identify and learn from high-performing “bright spot” schools and districts and supporting local strategies to recruit and retain teachers through community-based Grow Your Own programs.
Current projects
This project will support the Colorado Department of Education’s (CDE) Strategy Office to develop a data-driven approach to identify and learn from “bright spot” schools and districts—those that demonstrate exceptional performance or growth on key outcomes such as literacy, attendance, or educator qualifications. REL Central will work with CDE to build its capacity to identify bright spots and recognize and understand effective practices they are using, to help the state promote peer learning and data use in continuous improvement and policy decisions.
This project will build the capacity of the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) and the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) to define, understand, and strengthen Grow Your Own (GYO) teacher programs as a strategy to address statewide teacher shortages. REL Central will assist its partners to gather information from districts with existing GYO programs to identify key components, successes, and challenges, and will develop research-informed resources to help local education agencies and educator preparation programs design and implement effective GYO initiatives that support teacher recruitment and retention.