A little more than a decade ago, we were part of a team at the Colorado Children's Campaign that, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, launched a set of initiatives aimed at improving high school education.
In 2002, we were mostly flying blind. Colorado had CSAP data, but that was just a snapshot. The tools to measure student progress over time hadn't yet been developed. Some high schools offered good educations, especially to high-performing students, but no Colorado high school graduated most of its low-income and minority students fully prepared for college or career training.