The Challenge
Colorado’s economy is growing, but so are the gaps between what employers need and what young people are equipped to do. Almost four out of five of Colorado’s high-wage, middle-skill jobs require a postsecondary credential beyond a high school diploma, yet less than one-fourth of high school graduates complete a postsecondary credential within six years of graduation. This disconnect limits economic opportunity for young people while making it harder for employers to find qualified talent.
Simultaneously, the state’s construction and skilled trades industry faces a significant workforce shortage. Colorado is projected to need more than 30,000 construction and skilled trades workers by 2030. Yet, education and training programs remain fragmented and difficult to navigate, and stigma continues to discourage some students from considering careers in the trades.
Despite these challenges, employers across Colorado are increasingly collaborating to create clearer, higher-quality career pathways that lead to family-sustaining wages and economic mobility. Colorado Succeeds is helping connect those efforts through an employer-led approach to talent development.
The Solution
There is growing momentum across Colorado to strengthen connections between education and workforce development. Through state policy initiatives, leaders established a statewide framework called the “Big Three,” which encourages high school students to graduate with experiences that prepare them for future success, including:
- An in-demand industry credential
- Postsecondary credit aligned to a defined pathway
- High-quality work-based learning opportunities
Inspired by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Talent Pipeline Management® (TPM) framework, the TPM for K12 initiative will increase student access to Big Three experiences, increase the quality and rigor of curriculum, and scale employer engagement and work-based learning.
Starting with the Denver metropolitan area, the TPM for K12 pilot will bring together participating school districts, employers, and education leaders around a shared goal: creating stronger pathways into construction and skilled trades careers. Participants, including career and technical education instructors, work-based learning coordinators, and other pathway leaders, will collaborate with employers to:
- Strengthen career awareness and navigation beginning in elementary and middle school
- Define what workforce readiness looks like for graduates
- Align pathway experiences with employer expectations
- Build sustainable regional work-based learning infrastructure
Employers will support structured job shadowing experiences, internships, and pre-apprenticeship opportunities for high school students. Colorado Succeeds will work with education partners to provide a stackable associate degree pathway that recognizes registered apprenticeship experiences through academic credit.
Employer Partnership and Collaboration
The TPM for K12 initiative builds on Colorado Succeeds’ longstanding construction and skilled trades employer collaborative, Project SCALE. For more than three years, participating employers have collaborated to map pathways, define critical jobs and skills, and create a new upskilling degree program and curated hiring events. Now, they turn to deepen alignment and partnership in K-12 education.
Because employers have already built trust, shared goals, and familiarity with the TPM process, they can more effectively partner with education leaders. Strong and ongoing feedback mechanisms and shared measures of success will help educators and employers hold each other accountable.
Colorado Succeeds also plans to leverage emerging statewide data infrastructure, including Colorado’s forthcoming Statewide Longitudinal Data System and other workforce data initiatives, to better understand education-to-employment outcomes and evaluate the effectiveness of employer-led pathways. Colorado Succeeds has experience with data collection, analysis, and consolidation, and currently tracks metrics across their collaboratives in their public-facing Talent Strategy Hub.
Scaling and Impact
As TPM for K12 launches, Colorado Succeeds has identified several implementation goals designed to strengthen opportunities for students, educators, and employers. These include:
- Expanding access to high-quality experiences through industry-recognized credentials, postsecondary coursework aligned to career pathways, and meaningful work-based learning experiences. Colorado Succeeds expects that more than 200 students will gain access to these immersive experiences within this first year.
- Strengthening pathway quality by supporting educators and employers as they align curriculum and readiness support. The pilot includes efforts to upskill 20 educators across eight school districts and co-design a quality and student readiness rubric aligned with employer expectations.
- Promoting growth opportunities for employer engagement as TPM for K12 creates new or improved work-based learning strategies and infrastructure.
While the pilot will initially focus on construction and skilled trades, Colorado Succeeds designed TPM for K12 with broader application in mind. The organization is actively engaged with employer collaboratives across multiple industries, including advanced manufacturing, life sciences, aerospace, and artificial intelligence.
Why Colorado Succeeds?
Colorado Succeeds is a nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition of business leaders committed to improving education and workforce outcomes across the state. The organization works at the intersection of education and business, helping ensure that solutions are responsive to both student needs and labor market demands.
Colorado Succeeds has expertise convening employers, with six statewide TPM employer collaboratives currently active across the state. Previous initiatives include the Homegrown Talent Initiative, PATH4WARD, and On-Ramps to Postsecondary Transitions, each designed to strengthen connections among education, training, and employment.
TPM for K12 represents the evolution of that work. By bringing employers and educators together around shared goals and measurable outcomes, Colorado Succeeds is helping create clearer pathways from the classroom to careers. Rather than waiting for qualified talent to emerge, employers and educators are building those pathways together.
