Plateau Valley High School

Plateau Valley High School is a very small rural high school in Collbran, Colorado, serving just 65 students in grades 9–12 as part of the Plateau Valley School District No. 50. Despite its tiny enrollment, the school ranks 155th of 338 Colorado high schools (54th percentile, 3 stars) — notably stronger than Grand Mesa High School (16th percentile) and Grand Valley High School (22nd percentile), both of which serve the same rural corner of western Colorado.

The school's biggest strengths are its graduation and dropout rates. Graduation has stayed above 93% every year since 2019–2020, reaching 95.8% in 2023–2024, while dropout rates have hovered near zero. The student-to-teacher ratio is just 8.2 to 1, giving students a level of individual attention that is rare anywhere. Academically, PVHS posts math proficiency above the state average (44% vs. 40%) and reading/writing slightly below (59% vs. 66%). The contrast with Grand Valley High School is especially stark in math: 44% proficient vs. just 17%.

One thing parents should understand is that district-level statistics make this school look worse than it is. The district's 2024–2025 graduation rate was just 52.3%, dragged down dramatically by Grand Mesa High School, an alternative school on the same campus with a 31.1% graduation rate and 24% dropout rate. By comparison, PVHS essentially has no dropout problem. The main concerns are a rising free/reduced lunch rate (43.1%, up from 28.4% two years ago) and chronic absenteeism that spiked to 32.5% in 2023–2024 before improving to 23.1% in 2024–2025. With only 65 students, a handful of absences can swing these numbers, but the graduation and dropout record is consistent enough across multiple years to be a true strength.