Lewis-Palmer School District 38 posted encouraging results in newly released state assessment data, with district officials presenting preliminary findings to the board that put the Monument-area district close to reclaiming its former top ranking. Across Colorado, schools as a whole performed at roughly the same level as the prior year, and D-38's results broadly tracked that pattern while also reflecting notable gains.
The Colorado Department of Education releases these frameworks to accredit districts and evaluate individual schools on factors such as academic achievement, academic growth, and readiness for postsecondary education and careers. For districts, accreditation tiers climb from "turnaround" at the bottom through "priority improvement," "improvement," and "performance," up to "distinction" at the top; individual school ratings follow the same ladder minus the top "distinction" tier.
After holding a "distinction" designation for 16 straight years, D-38 has spent the past two years rated at the "performance" level; however, this spring the district's score climbed to 73.2 percentage points, leaving it just 0.8 points short of the "distinction" threshold. The district's chief academic officer told board members that staff are currently exploring supplemental data that could be submitted to CDE through a formal "request to reconsider" process, which might lift the overall score. With its preliminary tally, D-38 sits 15th out of 184 districts and boards of cooperative educational services evaluated statewide.
Every school operated directly by D-38, together with Monument Academy Middle and High School, earned a "performance" accreditation rating. Monument Academy Elementary stood apart as the sole school in the district to land in the "Improvement Plan" category, sliding 14.3 percentage points below its previous-year score. Prairie Winds Elementary led the district with an overall score of 89 percent, a gain of 5.8 points compared with 2025.
Growth figures told a more complicated story. In CMAS English language arts, a measure that gauges how much students improved relative to their peers statewide, just two district schools hit or surpassed the state's median growth percentile of 50, while four schools cleared that bar in mathematics. Results on the PSAT and SAT were considerably brighter — across the district's three secondary schools, only Lewis-Palmer High School fell short of the median growth threshold, recording a percentile of 47.
Postsecondary data for the class of 2025 showed 54.3 percent of graduates heading to four-year colleges or universities, 13.6 percent enrolling in two-year institutions, another 13.6 percent entering career and technical education programs, and 4.1 percent joining the military. District staff acknowledged that certain groups were absent from that accounting, including students taking gap years, those who accumulated college credits while still in high school, and some participants in apprenticeships or industry training — gaps that help explain the difference between graduation and matriculation rates.
The board also took up a parent complaint from the current school year; after district leadership cleared the employee referenced in the complaint, a parent appealed that finding, and the board voted to accept the appeal and conduct its own review, with a decision due within 15 days at a forthcoming meeting.
Whether D-38's "request to reconsider" submission moves the district's score across the "distinction" threshold remains to be seen.