Create a Colorado Skills Map to Close the State’s Talent Gap
By 2031, 73% of Colorado jobs will require postsecondary training, yet fewer than 30% of Colorado graduates go on to earn any postsecondary credential. The state’s high educational attainment is a result of credentialed adults moving in, rather than the development of homegrown talent. Colorado is already investing in multiple pathways to improve workforce readiness, but Colorado is spending public money on credentials, course credits, work-based learning, and a data system without a common way to determine whether those investments develop skills that secure jobs. Colorado’s investments demand urgent and meaningful coordination to function as a coherent system.
To address this, the state should establish a Colorado Skills Map developed and validated by a cross-agency and stakeholder working group. The Colorado Skills Map would define the technical and durable skills employers expect by sector and occupation, then attach a common skill identifier to ensure that credentials, courses, and work-based learning experiences are recognized as equivalent and portable across the state.
The timing is urgent, as the Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) is actively being developed and postsecondary and workforce programs are being consolidated under the recently passed Unified Postsecondary Talent Development System Act (HB26-1317). The Colorado Skills Map will build the interconnection needed across the education and workforce systems. As a result students can see clear pathways to a career, employers can trust credentials, and the state can make data-informed decisions and investments for a stronger talent pipeline.
Challenge and Opportunity
Colorado’s college-going rate trails the national average of 61% at just under 50%. While Colorado ranks among the most educated states on paper, that attainment comes from adults moving to the state already credentialed, not from Colorado’s own graduates finishing a pathway. This is known as the “Colorado Paradox.” Colorado needs to equip a homegrown workforce to meet the demands of a shifting and growing economy, especially if the state wants to remain competitive, continue attracting business, and provide Coloradans with pathways for economic mobility.
In 2023, the Colorado Workforce Development Council (CWDC) in partnership with the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE), Colorado Community College System (CCCS), Colorado Department of Education (CDE), and Colorado Succeeds released a framework for quality non-degree pathways into the workforce. In 2025, SB25-315 established “The Big Three,” creating a postsecondary and workforce readiness funding model and setting a goal for every student to achieve one of three milestones: earn 12 college credits, earn an industry-recognized credential, or complete a work-based learning experience upon high school graduation. Today Colorado is actively consolidating and expanding its Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness programs, implementing quality standards for nondegree credentials, developing stackable credential pathways, and building the aforementioned Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) to connect K-12, postsecondary, and workforce data to inform decisions and investments.
Yet, there remains a number of challenges that need to be addressed.
- Credentials Not Leading to Employment: In 2025, Colorado’s Workforce Development Council reduced the List of Qualified Credentials by nearly a third because previously approved credentials did not offer a clear pathway to employment and economic mobility.
- Lack of Portability: Colorado’s 1215 Task Force, established to fix fragmentations between K-12, postsecondary, and workforce readiness programs, found in its 2023 report that students often lose their credit and work-based learning experience records when they change high schools, or move to between the K-12 and Postsecondary systems.
- Outcomes Not Reproducible: Most notably, there is not a common framework to connect these programs (i.e., The Big Three and non-degree pathways) and measure outcomes for the state in context of the new SLDS. Without a common basis for assessing portability and comparability, Colorado may know which program worked but lack the understanding of why it worked and therefore how to reproduce it.
The definition and tracking of skills across these programs is a critical gap. The Big Three tracks credits, credentials, and work-based learning, but does not include the skills earned through these experiences. The non-degree pathways framework identifies evidence of skills and competencies learned as a requirement, but does not define what skills matter for particular occupation. Without a standard attaching validated skills to programs or courses, the state cannot determine how experiences transfer across programs, how K-12 connects to the workforce, or what skills lead to employment. No individual school district, college, workforce board, or employer can create statewide interoperability on its own. Only the state can establish a common framework across K–12, postsecondary education, workforce programs, public funding, and statewide data infrastructure.
A Colorado Skills Map, or a shared set of skills validated by employers, educators, workforce boards, and workers, tied to specific occupations and sectors, could close this gap. Each skill would carry a common identifier (i.e., similar to a standardized course number) that courses, credentials, and work-based learning experiences would use, creating a recognizable standard of equivalency across the system. This would allow the state to validate credentials before they’re funded, enable a “validated skill” to travel with a student across schools and institutions, and provide a common language to connect existing programs across the state for measurement in the SLDS. If successful, the Colorado Skills Map would allow students to make informed decisions about their career by showing the different pathways to an occupation, prevent employers from having to vet every program individually, and empower the state to make data informed decisions and investments for a stronger talent pipeline.
The Colorado legislature passed HB26-1317 in 2026 to support the creation of a unified system of postsecondary talent development and Executive Order 2025-006 calls for an audit of Colorado’s postsecondary talent development system to reimagine a future unified system that meets the needs of learners, job seekers, and employers. Yet, this consolidation does not extend to the K-12 and PWR system, meaning the state is on track to create two individually, well-organized systems that lack a shared language. Building the Colorado Skills Map bridges this gap and integrates the system from kindergarten through employment.
Plan of Action
Recommendation 1. A Cross-agency Working Group to Define the Colorado Skills Map
Building on Executive order 2025-006’s direction to unify Colorado’s postsecondary and talent system, the governor’s office should issue an executive directive creating a cross-agency working group to define and build the first Colorado Skills Map. The working group should be led by CDE’s office of Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness (PWR), with CDHE, CCCS, CWDC, the Office of Information and Technology (OIT) and other relevant agencies and entities as participants. It should establish an advisory committee composed of small- and medium-sized businesses (including rural employers), education institutions, labor organizations, parent-student advocacy organizations, regional workforce development councils, and other relevant stakeholders. The advisory committee should be meaningfully consulted to inform how the working group develops and tests the skills maps for their respective sectors. Within 180 days, this group should define a skills map that provides a common framework linking education programs, workforce expectations, and outcomes data.
The working group should determine three priority sectors for the initial Colorado Skills Map. Examples could include healthcare certification, a skilled trade, and an emerging tech credential. . The Colorado Skills Map should define the entry-level and mid-level occupations in that sector, the technical and durable skills required at each level, and a skill identifier for each to link them back to the education or training required to attain them.The working group should consider how skills stack (i.e., build on each other in a sequence) and design the map to illustrate how skills earned today for entry level occupations can lead to potential mid-level and advanced positions.
CDE’s office of PWR should be responsible for maintaining and updating the developed skills map. Using SLDS data, CDE’s office of PWR should evaluate the Colorado Skills Map against wages and outcomes every three years and report to the State Board of Education (SBE). The CDE should update the Skills Map every three years.
Recommendation 2. Feasibility and Readiness Assessment for Colorado Skills Map Application
Before asking schools, workforce programs, and employers to adopt the Colorado Skills Map, PWR and CCCS should conduct a feasibility and readiness assessment within 180 days of defining the priority sectors. This assessment should determine whether the Colorado Skills Map can be reliably applied to existing education and workforce programs, what resources implementation would require, and whether there are regions with the institutional capacity and willing partners necessary to conduct a meaningful real-world pilot.
The feasibility assessment should:
- Select and catalog sample regions for all their existing courses, credentials, and work-based learning experiences to map them against the skills and identifiers;
- Estimate the resources and system changes required for implementation such as changes to curriculum design or capacity for data collection, and
- Identify regions with sufficient readiness to participate in a limited pilot.
Particular attention should be paid to differences in implementation capacity between large and small districts, urban and rural communities, workforce providers, and work-based learning partners. The assessment should determine whether implementation requirements would create barriers that could unintentionally exclude lower-capacity institutions or regions from participating.
After the feasibility assessment, the working group should conduct a readiness assessment to identify regions that meet a defined set of minimum requirements necessary for a meaningful pilot of the Colorado Skills Map across the education-to-workforce continuum.
The readiness assessment should produce a short implementation plan for each prospective region identifying participating organizations, the occupations and programs to be tested, anticipated costs, technical-assistance needs, data requirements, and any remaining barriers to implementation. The implementation plan should be presented to solicit interest from those regions willing to participate in an implementation pilot.
Recommendation 3. Pilot the Colorado Skills Map
If there is agreement between the working group and the region on the implementation plan, they should proceed with up to three regions for an implementation pilot within 270 days. The pilot should measure whether:
- Institutions can reliably document learner attainment;
- Validated skills are portable, i.e., can be recognized across participating programs and institutions;
- The Colorado Skills Map can effectively be incorporated into existing CDE and CCCS reporting, enrollment, and labor data;
- Employers find the information useful and trustworthy, and
- Implementation costs and administrative burdens remain manageable in real-world conditions.
CDE’s office of PWR and CCCS should report findings and make recommendations for either scaling or sunsetting this effort to the working group, the Governor’s Office, the General Assembly’s committees on education, and the State Board of Education.
Should the pilot’s findings support an expansion of moving forward with the Colorado Skills Map implementation, the Governor should reconvene the working group within 90 days to expand the map for major Colorado sectors, beyond the first three following the same sector-partnership validation process.
Recommendation 4. Publish a Public Registry for the Colorado Skills Map
Within 12 months of pilot completion, CDE and CCCS should publish the validated Colorado Skills Map in a public registry for both learners and educators. This should be modeled after CDE’s Colorado Academic Standard Online, which allows users to create customized views of state academic standards by subject and grade level, showing grade level expectations, evidence outcomes, and academic context for each. Similarly, a Colorado Skills Map public registry should allow users to navigate by sector and occupation level, viewing each sector’s entry, mid and advanced career levels along with the technical and durable skills expected at each.
The public registry should also include resources with an implementation checklist inspired by the learnings from the pilot and guidance on tagging existing courses and credentials with skills identifiers for reporting. This will provide a comprehensible and evidence-based playbook for adoption for both learners and educators.
Recommendation 5. Incentivize Adoption of the Colorado Skills Map
The State Board of Education should use its existing authority to align PWR Sustain Funding to the Colorado Skills Map. SB25-315 created the PWR Sustain funding, which is outcomes-based funding designed to incentivize schools and districts to offer postsecondary credits, credentials from the list of qualified credentials, and work-based learning experiences. PWR Sustain Funding is Colorado’s recurring financial incentive that provides reimbursements for student outcomes, which is essential in a local-control state, where districts cannot be mandated to adopt new programs. SB25-315 directs the State Board of Education to adopt rules and establish the “criteria that constitutes successful satisfaction” of the postsecondary, workforce, and work-based learning requirements. As such, the SBE should use their existing authority to revise the funding criteria to include alignment with the Colorado Skills Map after the public registry has been published for one year. With this revision, PWR funding would incentivize schools and districts to offer postsecondary credits, credentials from the list of qualified credentials, and work-based learning experiences that build the skills outlined in the Colorado Skills Map.
This will not increase costs to the state, or reinvent the program; it simply adapts it to better serve students by ensuring offerings are aligned to skills employers demand.
Recommendation 6. Build Skills Map identifiers into the Statewide Longitudinal Data System
The Governor’s Office of Information and Technology, in partnership with CDE, CDHE, and CDLE is currently building Colorado’s SLDS under HB24-1364, a cross-agency data infrastructure to connect student information to their workforce experience. If Colorado’s SLDS is to be useful to stakeholders, it needs to meaningfully compare programs. The Colorado Skills Map gives the SLDS a common comparable unit of analysis, allowing it to produce insights the state can act on. As such, the standard skill identifiers should be integrated into the SLDS. Given that the SLDS’s governing structure already includes OIT, CDE, CDHE, and CDLE, the board is positioned to decide how and when identifiers should be incorporated.
With the integration of the identifiers, the state would be able to track student and employment outcomes at the skill level, across programs. This allows the state to answer: (1) what wages are associated with a specific skill, (2) how quickly does a skill lead to employment, and (3) how often does earning a skill lead to further education, higher credentials, or higher pay.
Conclusion
Colorado has already made significant investments to build a skilled, homegrown workforce through funding models, data infrastructure, and frameworks. A Colorado Skills Map is a comprehensive solution that enables multiple investments to work together. Without shared data and language, Colorado’s consolidation efforts will result in disconnected systems unable to drive at ambitious workforce goals. The Colorado Skills Map helps Colorado close its talent gap by translating its rising credentials numbers into skills that employers trust, leading to careers and economic mobility for Coloradans. Ultimately, building a pipeline of homegrown talent to drive the future of Colorado.
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