While some Colorado students are performing better in testing than prior to the pandemic, a large percentage of students continue to underperform testing expectations.

The State Board of Education recently laid out a 2025-28 Strategic Plan to address those concerns, among others, over the coming years.

The board’s priorities include “increasing student engagement” and “accelerating student outcomes.”

Increasing engagement means lowering absenteeism and dropout rates, with the board making it a “wildly important goal” to “reduce K-12 student chronic absenteeism by more than 50 percent from its pandemic high of 35.5 percent in 2021-22 to 15 percent in 2027-28.”

It plans to do this through a statewide campaign to boost attendance and “attendance-focused learning cohorts.”

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Along with accelerating student outcomes, the board hopes to boost student test scores in Colorado on which which the majority of students are underperforming.

This is all according to the Colorado Department of Education’s state achievement results for spring 2024. The tests looked at English language arts and mathematics scores for students grades 3-8.

While students in the lower grades largely performed better in 2024 than in 2019, the upper grades tested had a significant drop off.

For example, 41 percent of third grade students met or exceeded expectations on the mathematics test in 2019, compared to 41.7 percent of third grade students in 2024.

Yet, for eighth grade students, that number had dropped from 36.9 percent in 2019 to 32.5 percent.

While some grades are outperforming their prepandemic testing results, the results also mean that upward of 50 percent-60 percent of Colorado students are underperforming expectations.

Because of this, increasing overall English language arts and math achievement is another goal for the board, with “a specific focus on third grade reading.”

It hopes to “increase the percentage of third graders meeting or exceeding expectations on ELA CMAS assessments from 42 percent in 2024 to 60 percent by 2028.”

According to the plan, initiatives to help meet this goal will target “historically underserved students.”