The Colorado Education Initiative (CEI) is an independent nonprofit organization that works in partnership with the Colorado Department of Education and public education stakeholders to accelerate bold improvement in student achievement through innovation, collaboration, and capacity building. CEI believes that increased student achievement for all Colorado students requires effective leaders in every school, effective educators in every classroom, and healthy and engaging environments that ignite a passion for learning in every student.
CEI partners with schools, districts, the state department of education, and institutes of higher education to sustain and scale LDC as an instructional tool for implementing the Colorado Academic Standards. CEI collaborated with our districts and partners to create the LDC toolkit that contains the materials needed to provide professional development on LDC to elementary and secondary teachers. The toolkit is a resource for LDC teacher trainers, LDC teachers, and anyone interested in learning more about LDC. The professional learning toolkit can be led by consultants or simply used as provided. The training can be customized to meet the specific context of your school or district. Additionally, we have an LDC “trainer of teachers” training session to provide a cadre of teacher leaders in your school or district who can continue to sustain and scale the work of LDC.
CEI consultants and teacher trainers have supported the implementation of LDC in more than 50 districts (with 1,500 administrators and teachers) in Colorado since 2012. CEI and our partner integration districts have provided strategic leadership in guiding LDC expansion to elementary teachers and students. The teachers in the field have developed connections from the standards work of LDC to assessments and educator evaluations.
See exemplary modules in LDC CoreTools authored by educators working with CEI:
The Common Assignment Study is a long-term study of teachers in two states designing instructional units together—based on LDC modules—led by the Colorado Education Initiative and The Fund for Transforming Education in Kentucky with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Participating teachers will develop and teach two instructional units per year that exemplify the content knowledge and skills embedded in the Colorado Academic Standards and Kentucky Core Academic Standards.
Research partners involved in the project include the Center for Assessment, Westat, Research for Action, and the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE)—which is facilitating the work of the teachers. The education departments in both states are also participating in the project.
To learn how The Colorado Education Initiative can support your LDC implementation, contact:
Amy Spicer, Director, Research and Impact, aspicer@coloradoedinitiative.org, 720-502-4707.
