Welcome

Welcome to the Office of School Improvement and Turnaround. The turnaround unit was formed as the result of Title I-A School Improvement funds provided within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and in an effort to provide assistance to districts with the accreditation category of “Accredited with Turnaround Improvement Plan” under Senate Bill 163. This unit will specialize in providing technical assistance and other services to districts and schools on improvement based on their Annual Yearly Progress and CSAP scores. This Unit will have the responsibility for CDE partnerships between school districts and external service providers, offering targeted assistance to districts on school improvement.

In addition to partnering with external providers and the states lowest achieving school districts, the Unit of Turnaround and Intervention will assume responsibility for the Closing the Achievement Gap Pilot which began successfully last year with the approval of funds from the state legislature, specifically targeted to increase achievement for all students in six partner school districts, while specifically closing the achievement gap between minority and low income students in these districts and their peers.

Finally, the Unit of Turnaround and Intervention will also assume responsibility for all pilot programs that involve the support of external providers and school districts. Pilot programs serve as a vehicle for CDE to experiment with researched based school improvement strategies within the context of Colorado’s educational environment, incubate those strategies, learn from knowledge gained during the incubation period and then take the successful school improvement strategies to scale,