Summary:
School District N. 14, located in Commerce City, Colorado, includes two middle schools — Kearney Middle School and Adams City Middle School — both serving 7th and 8th graders with a combined enrollment of 693 students, and the district itself ranks 115th out of 115 districts in Colorado. Both schools are in the bottom 1–4% of Colorado middle schools, with Kearney ranking 450th and Adams City ranking 463rd out of 469 middle schools in 2025–2026. This is a district in crisis, with academic proficiency rates drastically below state averages.
Kearney Middle School is the relative academic standout of the two. It outperforms Adams City Middle School in every 2025–2026 CMAS subject: 11.9% vs. 8.7% in ELA, 10.7% vs. 5.5% in math, and 10.8% vs. 5.5% in science. Kearney also improved in all three subjects over the prior year, while Adams City declined in ELA and science. Adams City, however, has better attendance and staffing: its chronic absenteeism rate is 35.5% compared to Kearney's 45.5%, and it has a more favorable student-teacher ratio of 11.9 to 1 versus Kearney's 13.3 to 1.
Poverty is extremely high at both schools, with 90.9% of Adams City students and 85.9% of Kearney students eligible for free or reduced lunch. Chronic absenteeism is a severe crisis, especially at Kearney where nearly half of students are chronically absent. Interestingly, both schools report dropout rates of 1.4%, below the state average of 1.6%. Eighth-grade scores match all-grade scores exactly at both schools, meaning the academic struggle is consistent across grade levels. Any meaningful improvement effort will need to address attendance, poverty-related barriers, and academic support simultaneously.
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