Patriot Applied Learning Campus

Patriot High School in Falcon, CO, is a very small public school serving just 115 students in grades 6–12, and it is part of El Paso County Colorado School District 49. While the district itself performs reasonably well overall (ranking 33rd out of 115 Colorado districts), Patriot has consistently ranked in the bottom quarter of Colorado high schools for more than a decade, landing at 294th out of 328 schools (10th percentile) for the 2024–2025 school year.

Compared to nearby schools, Patriot is the lowest-ranked in its region. For context, Falcon High School ranks in the 38th percentile, Sand Creek High School in the 27th, and Power Technical — a same-district school with a similar 6–12 structure located just 7.6 miles away — ranks in the 64th percentile. Power Technical is a particularly telling comparison: it serves a higher percentage of economically disadvantaged students than Patriot, yet its graduation rate is 91.7% versus Patriot's 68.4%, and its chronic absenteeism rate is just 11.7% versus Patriot's 51.9%.

There are genuine signs of progress. Patriot's graduation rate has climbed from 33.3% in 2020–2021 to 68.4% in 2024–2025, and its dropout rate has fallen to 3.2%. However, the state average graduation rate is 85.6%, and chronic absenteeism — with more than half of students missing enough school to be counted as chronically absent — remains the school's biggest obstacle. Patriot also enjoys a remarkably low student-teacher ratio of 9.1:1, the lowest among all nearby schools, yet that staffing advantage has not translated into strong academic outcomes. Test scores in reading, writing, and science remain below district and state averages, though very small class sizes mean year-to-year results can swing considerably.