Colorado Legacy Schools
The Colorado Legacy Schools (CLS) initiative works with high schools and districts to dramatically increase the
number and diversity of Colorado high school students who are succeeding in Advanced Placement (AP) math,
science, and English courses. As of May 2016, CLS has supported 38 schools across 20 districts. CLS supported 10
additional schools across six new districts during the 2015-16 school year. The work is focused on students who are
typically underrepresented in AP courses, including females, minorities, and students living in poverty. Students
participating in CLS report that their AP courses have exposed them to more rigorous content and, as a result,
they have gained confidence in their academic abilities. In fact, 97 percent of CLS students report that because of
their participation in CLS AP courses, they more deeply believe they can be successful in college and career after
graduating high school.
“Sometimes we honestly need to struggle more. Most of the time [in AP], it’s like
one of those [problems] where you just get really stuck. And so then you just kind
of learn to work through it. I think that’s really important because there are going to
be problems, even times in your life, where you’re just stuck and you’ve just got to
figure out how to push it through.”
CLS Student
Next Generation Learning Challenges
Thompson is one of three Colorado school districts to receive support from CEI’s Next Generation Learning
Challenges (NGLC) project to transform classrooms. Colorado Springs School District 11 and Westminster Public
Schools are also putting school redesigns into motion, developing whole-school personalized learning models that
strive to increase student engagement and ownership of their learning. Out of the six national NGLC grantees,
Colorado is the only one that has engaged our state department of education—a partnership that has been
instrumental in elevating the importance of the NGLC design work in the state.
“This innovative partnership supports our competency-based system, which
embraces the idea that students should take ownership of their learning in an
environment that requires them to be fully engaged and show mastery of their
learning material.”
Dr. Pamela Swanson, Superintendent
Westminster Public Schools (Adams 50 School District)
is directly connected to how much and how well a student learns.
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