Methodology
Common Sense Institute gathered the data shown on this dashboard through the Colorado Department of Education's (CDE) data pages and through CDE data requests. Currently, the dashboard depicts the most recent year of data for each metric available, either the 2023–24 or 2024–25 school year, alongside historical data from the 2018–19 school year. The 2018-19 school year was chosen as a point of comparison so as to exclude data from COVID-19–impacted years, when many education metrics were volatile and others were not collected.
This dashboard is designed to serve as an up-to-date resource for education data: future years of data will be added as they become available from the CDE. The "behavioral incidents" metric measures all behavioral violations in each district as a rate per 1,000 students. All other metrics in this dashboard match formats published by the Colorado Department of Education. Definitions of individual metrics are available below..
Definitions
6-Year Graduation Rate:
Number of students in the AYG cohort receiving a regular diploma [within six years of entering ninth grade]
Administrative staff:
Individual who performs tasks associated with executive management, administrative leadership and organization direction and is responsible for developing, directing, and interpreting policies and regulations.
Administration is the sum of the following job titles: 1. Superintendent 2. Assistant/Deputy/Associate Superintendent, Senior Executive, Executive Director, Director of Special Education 3. Non-Instructional Manager, Director, Supervisor 4. Instructional Manager, Director, Assistant Director of Special Education, Supervisor
Anticipated Year of Graduation (AYG):
The year a student is expected to graduate high school based upon the year they first begin attending a Colorado public high school. An unchanging AYG is assigned to a student as part of the Student End of Year data collection by adding three years to the school year the student first begins ninth grade in the state of Colorado. Transfer students who enter a Colorado public high school for the first time at an upper grade level are assigned an AYG in a similar manner, adding two years to the school year for tenth graders, one year for eleventh graders, and assigning the current school year to twelfth graders since they are expected to graduate at the end of the school year.
Chronic absenteeism:
Students who miss 10% or more of the school year.
Instructional spending:
Instructional spending is the sum of salaries, employee benefits, purchased services, supplies and materials, and other expenditures.
Instructional Staff:
Depicts the sum of teachers and instructional support staff.
Intra-district choice:
Enrolling in a school other than your assigned (attendance boundary) school within the same district.
Inter-district choice:
Choosing a public school in a different district than the one you live in.
Overall public enrollment:
Depicts Pre-K-12 public enrollment by district.