High Quality Schools Heat Map

FALL 2020

The Colorado high-quality Schools Map seeks to answer a simple question: Who has access to the top1 public schools in Colorado? Importantly, this map gauges practical access to the top schools by accounting for things like driving time and the number of seats actually available in the school relative to the local population. Based on this data, every Colorado zip code was assigned a score on a scale of 1-5, with “5” representing excellent access to the top quality schools and “1” representing poor access to the top quality schools. This map was designed with the lived experiences of families in mind.

Open Doors, Open Districts

FALL 2018

The number of parents exercising the power of school choice options is far more than most public policy debates in Colorado suggest. Over 145,000 students, or over 16 percent of the public school population, “choice” into a traditional public school other than the one assigned to them based on their address — a population larger than total public charter school, public magnet, private school, or home-school enrollment in the state.

School choice is based on one simple but powerful principle: Parents should have the ability to send their kids to any school that will help their children thrive.