Office of Standards and Instructional Support

About

The Office of Standards and Instructional Support (SIS) consists of full-time and part-time staff of content specialists with expertise in all areas within the Colorado Academic Standards. This team is committed to supporting education professionals across the state in implementing the Colorado Academic Standards (CAS) for student success. The team provides guidance and expertise through technical assistance, both internally and externally, related to standards implementation and instructional support.

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News and Announcements

Upcoming Standards Revision

The Colorado Academic Standards for Comprehensive Health, Mathematics, Reading Writing Communicating, and Science will be reviewed by the State Board of Education during the 2024-25 academic year. The process will include a benchmarking study by a third party (summer 2024), public input survey (fall 2024), initial review by the State Board of Education (winter 2025), revision (if necessary) by volunteer committees (spring 2025), presentation of initial draft to the State Board of Education (summer 2025), public input on draft revisions (fall 2025), State Board review, amendments and approval (spring 2026).

Welcome New SIS Team Members

The Standards and Instructional Support Office has specialists to help you across all content areas. This summer, we welcomed several new people to the SIS team, including a new director, a new visual arts specialist, and a new specialist for reading, writing and communicating. Here they are:

Shelly Ramos, Director of Standards and Instructional Support

Shelly Ramos is the new director of Standards and Instructional Support, where she will supervise Colorado's review, revision, and implementation of the Colorado Academic Standards and lead CDE's content specialists in supporting high-quality instruction statewide. Shelly comes to Colorado from Texas, where she spent 15 years directing standards and curriculum efforts at the Texas Education Agency (TEA). Before her work at TEA, Shelly also worked in educational publishing and spent 10 years teaching high school social studies. Welcome to Colorado, Shelly!

Mykel Knight, Reading, Writing and Communicating Specialist

Mykel Knight is CDE's new specialist for reading, writing and communicating, which encompasses P-12 English literacy teaching and learning. Prior to coming to CDE, Mykel spent 19 years in Colorado Springs School District 11 as a teacher, a literacy specialist, and their K-12 director of literacy and humanities. Mykel started her teaching career at Cheyenne Mountain High School, and we are excited to have her at CDE.

Lindsay Latva, Visual Arts Specialist

Lindsay has taught middle and high school visual art where she developed comprehensive, project-based curricula and was named middle school teacher of the year by the Colorado Art Education Association during her time at Rifle Middle School. Lindsay holds an MA in art education from the University of Northern Colorado and she is the founder of the non-profit Bristlecone Arts Collaborative. Through Bristlecone, Lindsay developed over 15 community and corporate partnerships, mentored art teachers, and facilitated art specific professional development for teachers.

All of us in SIS wish to express gratitude to the members of the team who departed this summer: Dr. Sam Messier, Robert Beauchamp, Dr. Olivia Gillespie, Dr. Donna Goodwin, and Judi Hofmeister.