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The Colorado Department of Education’s (CDE) Office of Learning Supports contracted with CADRE to support CDE’s efforts to improve school and district systems at the organizational level with the (COMTSS). COMTSS is a framework for considering prevention-based approaches to improving student outcomes. The framework has five key components: (1) team-driven shared leadership; (2) data-based problem solving and decision-making; (3) family, school, and community partnerships; (4) comprehensive screening and assessment systems; and (5) a layered continuum of supports.

Districts sign up to receive professional learning from CDE using the COMTSS framework. Staff members from the Office of Learning Supports work with districts to identify priority improvement areas around academic outcomes (e.g., results from standardized test scores or locally developed assessments) and/or behavioral outcomes (e.g., out-of-school suspensions, and chronic absenteeism). The CDE staff then provide professional learning to districts so that districts then have capacity and resources to provide professional learning to schools in designing interventions aimed at improving those outcomes.

CADRE’s role as the external evaluator is to serve as a thought partner to the Office of Learning Supports as their team makes decisions about professional learning implementation and how to evaluate effectiveness. Key indicators of organizational growth toward addressing priority improvement areas include measures of organizational capacity to conduct this work, a school fidelity tool aligned to the five components of the COMTSS framework, and course completion data from the , a platform for professional development courses aligned to the COMTSS framework.

Partnerships like this one with CDE’s Office of Learning Supports is one way CADRE fulfills its mission to collaborate with state organizations and engage in research designed to make a positive difference in schools and communities.