Our Promise

As Colorado’s largest labor union, CEA works collectively with all education stakeholders to ensure Colorado’s standing as an excellent state in which to learn, live, work, and raise a family.

Our Mission

The Colorado Education Association works collectively to provide the best public education for every student.

Our Pillars

Student-Centered Learning

CEA members believe that the only way to guarantee our students’ success is to put our students at the center: the center of our classrooms and our schools, the center of education reforms, and the center of attention in every conversation about public education.

• CEA is committed to working collaboratively with all Colorado communities to ensure the best public education for every student.
• CEA is working to ensure that research, high-quality student assessments, and training are in place to allow educators to use data-driven decision making in classroom instruction. CEA supports evidence-based, innovative instructional practices with documented outcomes that can be replicated across schools and districts.
• CEA will work with teachers to integrate formative assessment data into classroom instruction and advocate for effective training for teachers in the use of formative assessment data.
• CEA advocates for the integration of the Colorado Growth Model into a systems approach to accountability and improvement that will help educators determine if students are on track to meet academic standards and achieve college and career readiness.
• CEA is committed to ensuring that educators get training in implementing academic and postsecondary workforce readiness standards, using new state assessments, and implementing supports for student learning that engage students and ensure their success in school.

Professional Excellence

CEA members believe that educators provide the stable, nurturing, inspiring environment that makes it possible to teach each student and provide individual attention to each student’s learning needs. We must raise the bar for what it means to be a quality educator.

• CEA is committed to the meaningful preparation of teaching candidates, including requiring every candidate to pass a rigorous, classroom-based performance assessment before being licensed to teach.
• CEA is working to ensure that quality teachers are trained to be cooperating teachers and mentors and all candidates have the clinical preparation they need to teach.
• CEA supports local associations and districts in developing programs in which teachers mentor and evaluate their peers in order to help beginning teachers succeed, increase teacher retention, assist teachers in improving their skills, and create career opportunities for teachers.
• CEA will work with higher education institutions to prepare candidates to teach in hard-to-staff schools through structured practice prior to full-time placement.
• CEA advocates for recruiting a diverse teaching force to teach an increasingly more diverse student population, which will lead to increased graduation rates and greater postsecondary college and career readiness.
• CEA is committed to becoming the preeminent provider of professional development through an in-house Professional Learning Institute which delivers high-quality learning experiences to teachers.

Economic Investment

CEA members believe education is the best investment we can make in the Colorado quality of life. Every Coloradan shares the problem of our low economic investment in public schools and the challenge of achieving sustainable funding for a quality, 21st century public education system.

• CEA is committed to engaging Coloradans in conversations about the need for sustainable education funding and forging community partnerships to attain sustainable funding.
• CEA is working for an adequate, equitable school finance system that will provide sufficient revenue for districts to meet state standards, assessment, accountability, and evaluation expectations and educate all students including English learners, students living in poverty, and special needs students.
• CEA supports the adoption of a modernized state tax system that meets education’s needs and supports economic development, and modifications to TABOR and other revenue growth and spending restrictions which artificially limit education’s financial resources.
• CEA will work to protect the long-term solvency of the State Education Fund and the Constitutional spending requirements for public education.
• CEA advocates for affordable access to higher education for all Colorado high school graduates, including undocumented students who attend Colorado high schools.
• CEA is committed to concurrent enrollment, early college, and fifth year programs that ease the transition from high school to higher education through the opportunity to take college courses in high school.