The Colorado Lab will serve as the coordinator of Family First rigorous evaluation efforts on behalf of the State to ensure strategic investments in evidence-building for services/programs positioned to meet the needs of Colorado’s children, youth, and families.
Colorado’s Home Visiting Investment Task Force was formed by the Early Childhood Leadership Commission and charged with developing a set of recommendations to expand access, promote equity, and increase the quality of home visiting services across the state.
In an interview featured in the latest edition of Washington Monthly, Kristin Klopfenstein, Colorado Lab director and a nationally recognized expert on Advanced Placement (AP) weighs in on why the benefits of the AP program continue to flow disproportionately to white students in affluent school districts—even as state and federal policy makers have worked to change this.
Nationally, COVID-19 has highlighted the instability of relying on a small number of school counselors to guide hundreds of students through academics, prep them for the future and triage increasing mental health challenges.
As the 2020 school year wound down, the Children’s Hospital of Colorado declared a state of emergency for youth mental health. Atop already high needs, the impacts of COVID-19 were devastating, resulting in a 90% increase in demand for behavioral health treatment and the emergence of suicide as the number one cause of death for children in Colorado.