First of all, I am biased toward focusing on 3rd grade reading scores, because that is the first level for which data is provided, and because it represents the foundation the kids will approach all of their future academics from. The following table is a summary, the figures used are taken from the article in The Gazette  August 11, 2010. The top 3 districts are pretty consistent year to year, although their scores do fluctuate. My wife the school teacher keeps reminding me that test scores are not the whole story, although her school, The Classical Academy in D20 always does well, scoring 93 on this particular measure.

  I say pretty normal, the central mountains where most of my favorite ski resorts are located, have been hurting for some fresh powder.  They’ve gotten a little again this week, but by this time of year, the base should be in the 50 inch range, and while some resorts have it, many do not.

  This week was a little busy. I showed quite a few houses in the $350 – $450k price range. The selection is pretty good in this range, though I was surprised there weren’t more builder ‘spec homes’ available. Several had sold just recently, so this segment may be picking up a bit. Generally, homes for sale in Colorado Springs in this price range are going to have some pretty nice amenities, such as granite countertops, nice lots in good areas, and will range from 3000 to 4,500 square feet. Most of the homes we looked at were in the Monument and northern Colorado Springs areas (Briargate, Northgate), as the client was most interested in D38 and D20 schools, and larger lot sizes.

  The table below is a comparison of the major Colorado Springs area public high schools, for the most recent Report Card reporting year, 2007/2008. It is not all inclusive, and it is not a comprehensive comparison, but it does give a pretty complete picture of how the Colorado Springs high schools look in regard to size, behavior, test scores, drop out rates, etc. These results correlate pretty well with the district level information I’ve looked at before, but show some pretty interesting comparisons within some of the larger districts. There are a couple of new schools that will be coming on line in the next year or so. The data in these reports is for the 2007 / 2008 school year (the most recent available), but in looking at the trend lines, in most cases it was not much different than prior years.

  I was a little surprised by the number of behavior incidents reported by the schools, and also the percentage of free or reduced lunch students. While I suspect the incidents reported numbers are not uniformly counted, it still should be an approximation of the school atmosphere.

 Please see also previous post about home prices vs education quality in Colorado Springs , and refer to the pull down menus (Relocation / Schools ) for more Colorado Springs public school district information.

Without going into a lot of educational mumbo – jumbo about why this is a hard statistic to track, I’d like to point out that in school districts with higher student turnover, this is a MUCH harder thing to measure than it looks. Still, graduation rates correlate pretty well with the 3rd grade reading CSAP scores, with the exception of D11, which seems to have an abnormally low graduation rate for the 3rd grade test score levels. Ironically, this year was an improvement over last year’s figure of 66.7%. The state average of 2009 was 74.9%.

Another important thing to remember is that the larger districts (such as 11)  have many schools, and the graduation rate can vary quite a bit between them. The state site link above can also provide individual high school graduation rates within a district.

 Here is a brief summary:

I will admit that I am into the numbers a bit. The state average is 70% of 3rd graders are proficient readers. All of the area’s main districts were at or above the state average, except Harrison, D2, which was only 59% reading proficient. That means in a class of 25 3rd graders, roughly 10 kids were not proficient readers. That compares with D20, 12 or 38 where the proficiency levels are all around 87- 90% where only 2 or 3 kids would not be proficient readers.
In the larger districts, what is striking, is how much disparity can exist between schools. District 11 (Colorado Springs) has schools ranging from 95% proficient (way to go Madison, huge jump!) to a low of Rogers Elementary school at only 51%. D11 had 12 schools with proficiency above 80%! Harrison D2 saw a high of 85% at Wildflower Elementary, and low of 25% at Monterey Elementary (a huge drop from last year). Interestingly enough, there were only 3 schools above the state average in D2, and 5 that were at or below 50%.
A good friend of ours, Jim Kretchman (who is considered with his wife Mary the co- founder of the Classical Academy in D20 and founders of Preschool Partners) is fond of saying something along the lines of “there is really no such thing as ‘the best’ school, only ‘the best’ school for your child”. I guess the same can be said about school districts.