Colorado Legacy Foundation Convenes Educators to Share Successes in Implementing the Colorado Academic Standards

DENVER, CO — Today the Colorado Legacy Foundation brought together nearly 200 educators to celebrate their accomplishments using the innovative Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) to help implement the Colorado Academic Standards with a focus on improving literacy.

“The Colorado Legacy Foundation is committed to giving educators the resources they need to dramatically improve instruction in their classrooms,” said Dr. Helayne Jones, President and CEO of the Colorado Legacy Foundation. “The Literacy Design Collaborative provides useful and innovative tools that can bring about meaningful gains in student achievement. We are thrilled to be able to showcase these first-year successes to educators from throughout Colorado.”

LDC offers a fresh approach to integrating literacy into middle and high school content areas.  Designed to incorporate literacy instruction within core subjects, LDC allows teachers to build content on top of a coherent approach to literacy. Today’s session introduced educators to the LDC system and showcased recent successes of schools piloting the LDC model.

“This is a transformation in how I facilitate learning for my students,” commented language arts teacher Kimba Rael.

Teachers from Eagle County School District and Thompson School District presented their successes to a group comprised of educators and administrators participating in the Colorado Integration Project. The Colorado Integration Project is a three-year effort funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which includes thirteen school districts piloting work to implement recent legislation regarding standards, assessments, and evaluations. Lessons learned will be shared statewide as all Colorado school districts work to implement the new requirements.