Early on, we learned the importance of meeting our partners where they are. Part of relationship-building is learning together with our partners about the data and actions needed to move the needle toward desired outcomes.
This year marks the fifth anniversary of the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab!
As this milestone approached, we reflected on the “essential elements” that make our work most effective. We’ll be sharing insights about these key elements throughout the year in a series of blog posts. We hope you’ll follow along, asking questions, sharing feedback, and offering ideas in the spirit of working together to make Colorado’s policy lab a valuable resource for the people of our state well into the future.
The Timothy Montoya Task Force to Prevent Children from Running Away from Out-of-Home (OOH) Placement was created to analyze the root causes of why children run away from OOH placement. The Colorado Lab conducted focus groups with children in out-of-home placement and young adults under 22 who have aged out of the child protection system to assist the task force in fulfilling its duties.
Six Denver-area charter schools delivered summer programs that included academic, social-emotional, and experiential components. The Colorado Lab created a learning community to support these schools in sharing best practices and identifying and testing solutions to emerging challenges.
RISE funding supported the Montrose County School District in its work to develop a referral process and support systems to increase access to mental health resources in six elementary schools. Colorado Lab staff met with the team in Montrose to synthesize work into a Student Wellness and Engagement Program Guide.
The Colorado Lab supported Centennial BOCES in addressing the unique needs of families in rural communities exacerbated by the pandemic by helping them identify key program elements and intended outcomes, develop tools for data collection, examine data to make meaning of progress, celebrate successes, troubleshoot barriers to implementation, and integrate lessons learned into next steps.
Laib Evaluation gathered feedback from RISE-funded and Colorado Lab-supported sites to better understand their experiences and to share learnings with funders, partners, and potential partner organizations. Evaluation results were overwhelmingly positive and are being used by the Colorado Lab to identify opportunities for improvement.
We are excited to share the launch of prosecutorial data dashboards in Colorado! These new publicly-available resources are designed to promote more effective, just, and transparent decision making in prosecution.
Prosecution and transparency: Colorado District Attorneys work across the aisle to improve community safety
A letter to the editor in response to a July 27, 2022 article entitled “Black, Hispanic and homeless people face discrimination.”