2025 Legislative Recap

The 2025 Colorado legislative session was defined by tough decisions and tight margins, with a $1.2 billion budget shortfall driving difficult tradeoffs. Even so, lawmakers demonstrated a strong, bipartisan commitment to advancing education and workforce priorities. We’re grateful to the state leaders, coalition partners, and advocates who helped ensure that key policies supporting Colorado learners made it across the finish line.

At Colorado Succeeds, we continue to champion policies that provide Colorado learners with pathways to economic mobility and ensure the state’s talent pipeline can meet industry demands.

Our advocacy this year was guided by our three priorities:

Equip learners and business leaders with data and information about the effectiveness of education and training pathways
Ensure more students, regardless of zip code or race and ethnicity, have access to high-quality pathways that lead to living-wage careers
Enhance employer engagement and alignment to create cohesive, sustainable pathways that meet workforce needs

This year’s legislative wins reflect meaningful progress toward these goals:

Ensuring the School Accountability System measures what matters for success

The 2025 bill “Education Accountability System” (HB25-1278) modernizes how Colorado evaluates high school performance by incorporating new measures of postsecondary and workforce readiness (PWR). These new measures are:

College and career readiness before graduation

Measurement metrics include AP and IB test scores, Guaranteed Transfer credits, early college programs, registered apprenticeships, industry-credential attainment, and diploma endorsements such as STEM, biliteracy, and PWR.

Student progress and outcomes after graduation

Measurement metrics include enrollment in CTE programs, registered apprenticeships, community colleges, four-year institutions, and military enlistment

These additions reflect the shift in how the state defines student success: one that recognizes the value of industry credentials, dual enrollment, and career-connected learning. The addition of these measures was driven by innovative high school leaders who are already embedding these experiences into their models and needed an accountability system that reflects and rewards their efforts.

Why it Matters
What gets measured is what gets done. Clear, outcomes-driven data empowers students, families, educators, and businesses to make informed decisions about learning providers.

Advocating for credit transfer clarity to and within Colorado’s higher education institutions

Building on last year’s Higher Education Transparency bill, this year’s HB25-1038—Postsecondary Credit Transfer Website—ensures more clarity about academic credit transfers.

This bill requires the Department of Higher Education to create a free, publicly accessible online platform that will clarify how courses, exams, and work experience count toward degrees at Colorado’s higher education institutions. Students will have access to:

A comprehensive record of recent credit transfer decisions from Colorado’s public colleges and universities
Information on how credits from other institutions, standardized tests (such as AP, CLEP, or IB), and prior learning or work-based experiences are applied toward degree programs
Clear listings of courses in the guaranteed transfer (GT) pathway matrix and other statewide transfer agreements

Why it Matters
Transfer transparency reduces course duplication, lowers degree costs, and helps learners make better pathway decisions. 

Streamlining and strengthening Colorado’s Postsecondary & Workforce Readiness (PWR) system

Following several recommendations from the 2023 “Big Blur” 1215 Task Force, SB25-315 “Postsecondary & Workforce Readiness Programs” will strengthen the PWR system by simplifying existing grant programs into two streamlined outcomes-based funds totaling $23 million.

The Sustain Fund will provide districts with funding based on student completion of any approved Big Three opportunity: attaining industry credentials, earning college credit, or participating in work-based learning.

The Start-Up Fund will distribute seed funding to districts to establish PWR programming. Starting in FY 2028, Start-Up Funding will evolve to become the John Buckner Innovation Fund and schools and districts will receive funding based on needs identified through the PWR indicators in the updated state accountability system (HB25-1278).

Why it Matters
This bill preserves PWR funding while reducing complexity, minimizing the administrative burden, and providing flexibility for districts to provide access to the Big Three in ways that most meet their students’ needs. This also demonstrates a continued commitment in Colorado to realize the recommendations of the 1215 Task Force and continue to improve the quality and access of the PWR system.

For more detail, read our spotlight blog.

Ensuring the implementation of the New Public School Finance Formula

Young child smiling and making a heart shape with their hands in a classroom setting

Last year, the state reworked the public school finance formula for the first time in 30 years, ensuring student needs would come before district needs and allocating more money for at-risk students and rural districts. Despite budget concerns, legislators upheld last year’s promise to students with SB25-1320, committing to a seven-year implementation timeline and a $256 million increase in state education funding for 2025 to ensure no district receives less money this year than last.

The implementation plan will gradually lower the state’s student averaging funding model from 5 years to 1, and allocates 0.65% of one-tenth of one percent of federal taxable income to the new Kids Matter Fund to sustain ongoing public education funding.

Why it Matters
Funding students based on need ensures more learners have access to high-quality pathways that lead to living-wage careers.

Authorizing Emily Griffith Technical College to award Associate of Applied Science degrees

SB25-1221 makes Emily Griffith Technical College the first technical college in Colorado’s K-12 system with the ability to award associate degrees. The first degree available will be in Advanced Manufacturing, with the potential for other high-skill, high-wage fields to follow.

The program will see students split their time between the classroom and job sites, earning a paycheck as they work toward a degree that can lead to higher-paying jobs or further education. This creates a framework for stacking work-based learning into degree pathways that other colleges across the state can follow.

This is a pivotal step toward providing more options for students to earn degrees through real-world experience, graduate with less debt, and be prepared for meaningful careers, especially in fields facing urgent workforce shortages.

Why it Matters
Aligning pathways to industry demand and student interest supports Colorado’s growing sectors and emerging economies, and ensures more young people are on a path to economic mobility.

For more detail, read our spotlight blog.

Supporting the formation of a Work-Based Learning Consortium in Higher Education

HB25-1186 “Work-Based Learning Experiences in Higher Education” aims to strengthen the connection between higher education and workforce readiness by developing a pilot program to integrate work-based learning, such as internships and apprenticeships, into Colorado colleges and universities. Work-based learning is a critical tool for preparing Colorado’s future workforce for success.

The bill tasks representatives from Colorado’s public higher education institutions with identifying work-based learning best practices and aligning academic programs with workforce needs. During this time, state funds can be used to remove financial barriers for students engaging in credit-bearing, work-based learning opportunities. At the end of three years, the consortium will deliver a report with recommendations for scaling work-based learning integrations in higher education statewide.

Why it Matters
This bill embeds real-world experience into degree programs, producing graduates who are skilled, connected, and prepared for the workforce.