Adams-Arapahoe 28J
Denver Worsened While Aurora Quietly Improved: A Tale of Two Urban Districts
Denver and Aurora sit side by side on the Front Range, Colorado's two largest high-poverty urban districts. Both surged past 43% chronic absenteeism during the pandemic. Both appeared to be recovering...
Colorado Now Has 17,500 More Seniors Than Kindergartners
In the 2014-15 school year, Colorado enrolled 66,068 kindergartners and graduated 62,933 seniors. More children entered the pipeline than exited it. That relationship has not held since.
Only 19 of 93 Colorado Districts Have Recovered to Pre-COVID Absence Levels
Five years after COVID-19 disrupted attendance patterns across Colorado, only 19 of 93 measurable districts have chronic absenteeism rates at or below where they stood in 2019-20. That is a 20.4% reco...
Three in Four Denver Homeless Students Are Chronically Absent
In Denver Public Schools, 76.2% of students experiencing homelessness were chronically absent in 2024-25. That is not a misprint. More than three in four students who are currently homeless in the sta...
Colorado Springs D11: From 29% to 46% Chronic Absenteeism in a Single Year
Something happened in Colorado Springs District 11 last year that no other large Colorado district experienced. The chronic absenteeism rate nearly doubled, jumping from 29.2% in 2023-24 to 45.8% in 2...
Native American Enrollment Falls 22% in Colorado, Steepest of Any Group
In a state named for its river by Spanish explorers and built on the ancestral lands of the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho peoples, the number of Native American students enrolled in public schools has fa...
District 27J adds 7,187 students as Denver's northern suburbs absorb the growth
Colorado lost nearly 18,000 public school students between 2014-15 and 2025-26. School District 27J gained 7,187.
White Kindergartners Down 21% in a Decade
Colorado's kindergarten classrooms in 2025-26 look nothing like they did a decade ago. White kindergartners numbered 27,385 in the October 2025 count, down 7,400 from 34,785 in 2016. That is a 21.3% d...
Colorado Hits All-Time Low as 10,000 Students Vanish
For five years, Colorado's enrollment decline looked manageable. The state lost 29,762 students during COVID's first year, clawed back 3,369 the next, then settled into a slow bleed of 1,000 to 3,000 ...
No Single Majority: White Students Drop Below 50% in Colorado
For the first time in the history of Colorado's public school system, no single racial or ethnic group constitutes a majority of students. White enrollment fell to 49.2% in 2024-25, then slipped furth...