Summary
Simla High School is a small rural high school in Simla, Colorado, serving about 101 students in grades 9–12 as part of the Big Sandy School District No. 100J, which is one of Colorado's top-rated districts, ranked 14th out of 115 districts statewide. The high school itself ranked 123rd out of 338 Colorado high schools in 2025–2026 (64th percentile, 3 stars), an improvement from 165th in each of the previous two years, though it peaked at a 5-star, 94th-percentile ranking in 2015–2016.
Academically, Simla shows a mixed profile. Early high school literacy is a clear strength — 82% of 9th graders and 78% of 10th graders were proficient in PSAT reading and writing in 2025–2026, well above state averages (66% and 65%) and far ahead of nearby Calhan Secondary School (46% and 70%). However, 11th-grade SAT reading and writing proficiency dropped to 54%, below the state's 60%. Math is the school's biggest challenge: SAT math proficiency was just 21% in 2024–2025 versus 32% statewide, and PSAT math scores also lagged. Science was once a signature strength — 58.3% proficient in 2022–2023 versus 24.6% statewide — but had fallen to 26.3% by 2025–2026. Calhan, by contrast, posted 47.8% science proficiency that year.
Outside of test scores, Simla looks very healthy. Chronic absenteeism is just 13.7% — about half the state's 28.4% and better than Calhan's 17.2% — and the dropout rate is 0.9% versus 1.6% statewide. Graduation rates have been strong at 92.9% (2023–2024) and 95.7% (2022–2023). With a favorable 10.5-to-1 student-teacher ratio, and about half of students eligible for free or reduced lunch (49.5%, nearly identical to Calhan's 49.8%), Simla offers a supportive environment. That said, with only about 100 students, test scores can swing dramatically from year to year based on a single cohort, so it's best to look at multi-year trends rather than any one year.
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