What the money buys
The budget shows what the state appropriates; the ledger shows what it spends. This page adds the state's own record of what that money delivers, over time and against the national average — shown side by side for context. No causal claim is made, here or anywhere on this site.
Education
Rose 32.0% since FY 2019-20
Fell 4.6% from the 2019-20 peak
Two measures of one idea, never joined
Rose 10.6 points since the class of 2011-12
Hover over any chart for exact values.
- CMAS test results are charted on the education page, with the federal NAEP check beside them — not on this dashboard.
- The funding series starts at FY 2019-20. Earlier years are not ingested yet.
- The new school finance formula (HB24-1448) phases in from FY 2025-26. That is a comparability break in the funding series.
- The graduation series is published by NCES up to the class of 2021-22 and by CDE after it. The two agree exactly at the overlap.
- The national series stops earlier than the state one because NCES publishes on a lag. That is a lag, not a fall.
This reading rests on: Total Program school funding · PK-12 pupil membership (October count) · Average per-pupil funding (Total Program) · 4-year graduation rate (all students) · US 4-year graduation rate (ACGR) · the reading itself
View education data as a table
| School year | Total Program | Pupils (Oct count) | Total Program per pupil | All spending per pupil | U.S. average | CO 4-yr grad rate | U.S. 4-yr grad rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | — | 889,006 | — | $9,292 | $11,445 | 77.3% | 83.2% |
| 2015-16 | — | 899,112 | — | $9,619 | $11,842 | 78.9% | 84.1% |
| 2016-17 | — | 905,018 | — | $9,849 | $12,260 | 79.1% | 84.6% |
| 2017-18 | — | 910,280 | — | $10,238 | $12,649 | 80.8% | 85.3% |
| 2018-19 | — | 911,536 | — | $11,072 | $13,189 | 81.1% | 85.8% |
| 2019-20 | $7.6B | 913,223 | $8,489 | $11,647 | $13,496 | 81.9% | 86.5% |
| 2020-21 | $7.2B | 883,199 | $8,123 | $12,233 | $14,295 | 81.7% | 86.1% |
| 2021-22 | $8.0B | 886,517 | $9,015 | — | — | 82.3% | 86.6% |
| 2022-23 | $8.4B | 883,264 | $9,596 | — | — | 83.1% | — |
| 2023-24 | $9.1B | 881,464 | $10,670 | — | — | 84.2% | — |
| 2024-25 | $9.78B | 881,065 | $11,452 | — | — | 85.6% | — |
| 2025-26 | $10.03B | 870,793 | $11,858 | — | — | — | — |
"—" is an honest blank: not yet published, or not yet ingested from an official source — never estimated. Grad rates are shown against the school year the class completed.
The four-year graduation rate is the high-school adjusted cohort graduation rate (ACGR). It is the share of a ninth-grade cohort that earns a regular high-school diploma within four years. It is not a college-completion measure. The chart also carries the classes of 2011-12 through 2013-14 (CO 75% / 76.9% / 77.3%; U.S. 80% / 81.4% / 82.3%).
Funding figures FY 2019-20 through FY 2023-24 are each fiscal year's own legislative-staff memo figure, at its latest published restatement. FY 2024-25 Total Program is the actual figure printed in the final fiscal note for HB25-1320. FY 2025-26 comes from the legislative staff's district run. That is their district-by-district table of school funding as appropriated in HB25-1320 and SB25-315. Superseded forecast vintages (e.g. per-pupil $8,477→$8,489, $8,078→$8,123, $11,448→$11,452) are never mixed silently.
Every period, where it came from, and what it cannot be compared to: Total Program funding · Pupils taught · Funding per pupil · Current spending per pupil · U.S. average, all spending · Graduating in 4 years · U.S. average
Public safety & corrections
Rose 19.2% since FY 2019-20
Fell 24.1% since 2014 · 28 per 100,000 below all states
Fell 37.9% from the 2022 peak
3rd of 47 in 2024 · 1st is the worst
Hover over any chart for exact values.
- The rank chart is drawn with 1st at the top, so a line moving up is a worse outcome.
- The incarceration rate stops at December 2025 because no 2026 population estimate is published. That is a blank, not a fall.
- The 2021 rank is against a third fewer states, because fewer met the reporting threshold that year.
This reading rests on: Department of Corrections appropriation · People incarcerated per 100,000 residents · Colorado MVT rate per 100k (FBI) · Colorado MVT rate: rank among the states · the reading itself
The Corrections appropriation rose 19.2%, from $1.00B in FY 2019-20 to $1.19B in FY 2025-26.
View corrections appropriations as a table
| Fiscal year | Total funds | of which General Fund | Stated in |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY 2019-20 | $998,134,380 | $891,299,801 | FY 2020-21 Appropriations Report |
| FY 2020-21 | $949,643,357 | $841,986,542 | FY 2021-22 Appropriations Report |
| FY 2021-22 | $967,271,654 | $876,009,960 | FY 2022-23 Appropriations Report |
| FY 2022-23 | $1,020,203,972 | $924,164,084 | FY 2023-24 Appropriations Report |
| FY 2023-24 | $1,099,206,104 | $510,212,589 | FY 2024-25 Appropriations Report |
| FY 2024-25 | $1,173,002,813 | $750,267,875 | FY 2025-26 Appropriations Report |
| FY 2025-26 | $1,190,256,447 | $1,086,028,946 | FY 2025-26 Appropriations Report |
Every figure is re-derived. The document's four fund lines (General Fund, cash, reappropriated, federal) must sum exactly to the Total Funds that same document prints. If they do not, the year is not published. Every row above — total and General Fund — comes from that one document, so each line reconciles against a figure the state printed itself. Why the General Fund column drops by half in FY 2023-24 and FY 2024-25: that is real. It is not a budget cut.
Under HB24-1466 the state refinanced two years of prison spending onto federal pandemic-recovery money. That replaced roughly $495M of state General Fund in FY 2023-24. Then it switched back. Total funds barely moved. That is why the first column runs smoothly through those years while the second one dips.
The state publishes these appropriations in two JBC series: the annual Corrections briefing and the annual Appropriations Report. The briefings show those two years before the refinance, so they state a much higher General Fund figure against the identical total.
We publish the Appropriations Report because it shows the swap rather than smoothing it. We read the briefings as an independent cross-check. They agree on the total for every year except FY 2024-25, which was restated down by $1,717,980. We corrected that on 2 August 2026 (see the corrections log). Requested-appropriation columns are never published as appropriations. Not adjusted for inflation.
Every period, where it came from, and what it cannot be compared to: Corrections budget
Two counts of people in prison. They are different measures and are never joined. The federal count of sentenced prisoners fell 24.1%, from 382 in 2014 to 290 in 2023. It ends 28 per 100,000 below the all-state rate, as in all 10 years both publish. The state’s own monthly count rose 3.5%, from 292.6 in July 2024 to 302.9 in December 2025.
Why both. Colorado’s own dashboard begins in October 2024, so no amount of care with state sources produces a decade. BJS counts every state the same way. That is what makes ten years possible, and what makes the dashed all-state line a fair comparison. Colorado has run below it every year of the series. Both fell sharply in 2020, on releases and slowed admissions during COVID, then partly recovered. The monthly line is the current picture the annual one cannot give.
The monthly line stops in December 2025 on purpose. The CDOC count runs to June 2026. But the denominator is the Census resident population estimate, and no 2026 estimate is published yet. Those months have a count and nothing to divide it by. Dividing by the 2025 population would bend the rate downward as the state grows, which would read as an improvement that did not happen. Census, not the FBI’s population. The FBI figure counts only residents covered by reporting agencies. That is right for a same-basis crime comparison and wrong for a share of the whole population.
The releases do not all overlap, and it would be easy to claim they do. The three biennial PDFs partition their years, and nothing bridges them. Prisoners in 2015 prints 2014 and 2015, Prisoners in 2017 prints 2016 and 2017, and Prisoners in 2019 prints 2018 and 2019. Only the later Statistical Tables releases overlap. So 2021 and 2022 are read from two separate publications each and cross-checked; the other eight years have exactly one source. Every year’s own record says which release it was read from.
Every period, where it came from, and what it cannot be compared to: Imprisonment rate /100k · All states · People incarcerated /100k · People incarcerated, monthly count
The vehicle theft rate rose 111.3%, from 232.8 in 2014 to 491.8 in 2024. It ends 243.5 per 100,000 above the U.S. average, as in all 10 years both publish. The same rate fell 37.9%, from its peak of 792.5 in 2022 to 491.8 in 2024.
Colorado publishes this count twice, and the two do not agree. The count from the state’s statutory crime-statistics tool rose 135.9%, from 12,914 in 2014 to 30,459 in 2024. It ends 1,532 below the open-data extract. Both are published. Neither is corrected against the other. The gap is the finding.
Every period, where it came from, and what it cannot be compared to: Vehicle thefts /100k · U.S. average · Thefts reported, CBI · Thefts reported, CDPS · Thefts at the U.S. rate
The years that publish here are the same years that publish for vehicle theft. Reporting coverage measures which agencies reported, not what they reported. So it is a property of the year rather than of the offense. Colorado sits at 98–99.5% in every year. The U.S. line has the same deliberate gap at 2021, when national coverage was 76.8%.
For robbery and aggravated assault these are third numbers, not the only ones. Colorado's two state publications disagree about both. Robbery differs by 35–37% and assault by 11–13%, because they count different things under the same word. That disagreement is set out below. The figures here are the FBI's, on the FBI's basis. They are not a ruling on which state source is right.
This reading rests on: Homicide /100k · U.S. homicide · Robbery /100k · U.S. robbery · Aggravated assault /100k · U.S. aggravated assault
And on: Burglary /100k · U.S. burglary · Larceny /100k · U.S. larceny
Colorado ranked 3rd of 47 states in 2024, against 16th of 47 in 2014. 1st is the highest theft rate in the nation. A smaller number is a worse outcome. It has been in the top four every year since 2019.
Every period, where it came from, and what it cannot be compared to: Vehicle theft rank
The totals agree. The definitions don't. For 2024 the two sources land within 1.3% of each other on total violent crime — which looks like confirmation, and isn't. Underneath, CBI counts 39% fewer robberies and 9% more assaults than the state's open-data extract. The gaps run in opposite directions and cancel. A two-line chart of the totals would tell you these sources corroborate each other; they don't, and we would rather show you that than draw the reassuring version.
The offense-by-offense check, 2024
| Offense | CBI Colorado Crime Stats | CDPS open-data extract | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Murder | 267 | 354 | −24.6% |
| Non-consensual sex offenses | 6,274 | 5,952 | +5.4% |
| Assault | 21,292 | 19,513 | +9.1% |
| Robbery | 3,823 | 6,198 | −38.3% |
| Total | 31,587 | 32,017 | −1.3% |
Same pattern in 2022 and 2023: totals within 1–9%, robbery off by 35–37%, assault off by 11–13%. Neither source is wrong — they count different things under the same word. Until we can state exactly which offenses each includes, a combined figure would be a guess with a citation attached.