Summary:
Littleton School District No. 6, rated 8th among 115 Colorado school districts with a 5-star ranking, operates three traditional high schools in the south Denver metro area serving grades 9–12: Arapahoe High School (1,748 students), Heritage High School (1,748 students), and Littleton High School (1,187 students), for a combined enrollment of 4,683 students.
Arapahoe High School leads the district, ranking 26th among 338 Colorado high schools with a 95.0% graduation rate and the strongest math and science scores—59% proficient on SAT Math, 66% on PSAT10 Math, and 53.6% on CMAS Science. Heritage High School is close behind at 31st in the state, with nearly identical reading/writing scores (83% vs. 84% on SAT Reading/Writing) and the district's lowest chronic absenteeism rate at 19.4%. However, Arapahoe clearly outperforms Heritage in STEM subjects and graduation rate. Littleton High School is the clear outlier, ranking 120th and earning 3 stars. It posts the lowest graduation rate (88.6%), the highest chronic absenteeism (31.4%), and trails the other two schools by 15–25 percentage points in nearly every academic measure.
Notably, Littleton High School serves a more economically disadvantaged population, with 40.19% of students qualifying for free/reduced lunch—more than double Arapahoe's 16.82% and nearly double Heritage's 20.02%—and this aligns with its lower outcomes. Despite having the smallest class sizes (19.6 student-teacher ratio vs. 22.5 and 22.3), Littleton continues to struggle, and its state ranking has slipped from 95th to 120th over three years. All three schools exceed the district's 16.0% chronic absenteeism rate, and CMAS Science proficiency dropped district-wide from 54.4% to 43.4% year over year. Still, even Littleton matches or exceeds state averages in most subjects, underscoring the overall strength of this district.
Thank you for your feedback!