Highland High School

Highland High School is a small public high school in Ault, Colorado, serving 299 students in grades 9–12 as the only high school in Weld County School District No. Re-9, a district ranked in the bottom 15% of Colorado. Despite favorable conditions—a low student-teacher ratio of 13.7, moderate poverty at 28.8%, and chronic absenteeism below the state average—academic outcomes lag significantly.

Math is the school's most persistent weakness. Only 15% of 11th graders were proficient on the 2025–26 SAT, versus 32% statewide, and that gap has held for four straight years. Reading and writing proficiency (51%) also trails the state (60%), with notable year-to-year swings likely driven by the small student body. The biggest red flag, however, is the graduation rate, which plummeted from 90.3% to 77.3% in 2024–25—the lowest among nearby regular schools. Eaton High School graduates 92.7%, Severance High School 93.0%, Windsor High School 96.2%, Greeley Central High School 92.0%, and Northridge High School 94.4%.

Nearby districts illustrate what's possible: Eaton High School sits just 3.9 miles away in the 84th-percentile Weld County School District No. Re-2, while Severance High School and Windsor High School belong to the 83rd-percentile Weld County Reorganized School District No. Re-4. Highland was itself a 75th-percentile, 4-star school in 2016–17, but has declined to the 27th percentile. On a more positive note, the school serves female, male, and low-income students better than its overall ranking suggests, and attendance improved sharply as chronic absenteeism fell from 29.1% to 21.3%. Still, with similar poverty levels to Eaton and Severance yet notably weaker results, the evidence points to school and district effectiveness—not demographics—as the driver of Highland's challenges.