News Summary

Please join us February 27 & 28 at our 2024 Annual Conference for a dynamic and informative event. The Annual Conference provides access to school leaders, board members, business managers and administrative and classroom staff from over 268 charter schools, serving 137,000+ students in more than 70 communities across Colorado. Our annual, in-person conference draws between 800-1000 attendees and our primary focus is on all types of school leaders who lead, run, manage, and purchase for the charter schools in the state.

You’ve heard it said over and over that the longest journey starts with a single step. Perhaps you’ve said that to your own staff as you begin a school year, or to your friends or family as you begin a journey. But leadership is like that too. That first step on the leadership journey is critical to what path you can take forward. If your vision is to climb a peak, your first step defines the journey. If your mission is to serve a community, your sidestep, misstep, or walking something back is as important as how you move forward.

Every three years the Colorado Department of Education is required by law to develop an objective report about the current state of charter public schools in Colorado. The 2019 edition of this report was recently released. What follows is a brief synopsis of some of the report’s main findings.

We are proud of the work our public charter school partners and public school choice advocates are doing in these three states to create more educational opportunities and to improve outcomes for our students and families. In our states, close to 10 percent or more of students attend public charter schools and many more benefit from opportunities like open enrollment, magnet schools, innovation schools and—more recently—micro-schools and community-based learning societies.

The Keystone Policy Center examined the data and analyzed how students in charter schools performed compared to students in district-managed schools across Colorado as the state emerged from pandemic shutdowns and interruptions to in-person learning.