This year, Colorado lawmakers made a fundamental change in how the state funds higher education. With Texas carrying out its own funding deregulation experiment, some see a trend developing. How will students be affected? Robert Capriccioso reports.

In our consumer culture, kids learn early about wanting and spending, but may not know much about the other side of the equation-working, earning and saving. In Denver, a program that gives 5th graders a taste of the world of work and paychecks has become a highlight of the school year for hundreds of children. Robert Ebisch reports on a day in the life of Young AmeriTowne.

In the view of Denver, Colorado school administrator Rob Stein, well-meaning efforts to improve public education risk sinking under the weight of distracting battles over side-issues. This column is reprinted from HeadFirst Colorado.

By transforming a neighborhood blight into a nurturing pre-school for Latino children, a group of parents and teachers in Denver, Colorado have shown that community effort can improve the lives of children—and brighten a whole neighborhood. Connect for Kids' director Cecilia Garcia explains how the Family Star Community Center was born.

The Colorado Children's Campaign is the leading voice for children in Colorado. Today, there are more than 1.1 million children in Colorado - and that number and their needs are growing. We create hope and opportunity for not just one of those children, or 100 children or 1,000 children - but 1,000,000 Colorado children at a time.

Since 1985, the Colorado Children's Campaign has worked to mobil

The Bell Policy Center in Colorado has a “Cycle of Opportunity” concept that goes something like this: if someone gets a good education, he or she is more likely to get a job that pays well. Getting a job that pays well means he or she is likely to be economically self-sufficient, which in turn makes this person more likely to own a home and provide for children. These children are thus more likely to be born healthy and get a good education themselves -- and the cycle repeats.

For this reason, self-sufficiency should be the underlying goal of public policy, according to the Bell Policy Center. So what can be done to encourage these conditions? This report looks at the Colorado Standard and presents state-based recommendations for numerous policy areas.

60 policymakers and numerous low-income constituents in Colorado, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, Washington, and West Virginia are spending a month together "walking a mile" in each other's shoes to learn from one another about poverty, public policies and politics. It's part of the national Walk a Mile (WAM) project based in Seattle. Among the object lessons: policymakers will try to feed their family on the amount of money they would receive in food stamps for their family size.

Mathematica gives good marks in its report to Congress on the State Children's Health Insurance Programs (SCHIPs) that offer health care coverage to children in families with incomes up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level and beyond. In almost all areas examined—outreach, enrollment and access to services—the programs are succeeding. In the 10 states studied, programs were put in place quickly, and overall, families were satisfied with the ease of enrolling children, many of whom remained enrolled for 12 months, depending on the state.

One out of every five U.S. students is a recent immigrant or born to parents who are immigrants. The Center in Child Development and Social Policy at Yale University describes in-depth how four very different schools -- in Greenbay, Wisconsin, Leadville, Colorado, Stamford, Connecticut and Columbus Junction, Iowa -- are changing their strategies and programs to meet their students' needs.