Caliche Junior-Senior High School

Caliche Junior-Senior High School is a small, rural combined junior/senior high school in Iliff, CO, serving 104 students in grades 7–12 as part of School District No. Re-1 Valley. Despite the district's mid-tier ranking, Caliche currently earns a 3-star state rating and sits at the 54th percentile of Colorado high schools, making it the stronger-performing high school in its district by a wide margin — Sterling High School, the district's other high school, sits at just the 25th percentile.

Caliche's high school students perform well on college-preparatory assessments. On the PSAT9 math test, 45% of Caliche students scored proficient in 2024-2025, compared with just 16% at Sterling and 38% statewide, and PSAT reading and writing scores also exceeded district and state averages. That said, CMAS test scores for the school's younger students in grades 7–8 lag behind state averages, and nearby Fleming High School posts considerably higher CMAS math and ELA proficiency rates. With only 104 students spread across six grade levels, small cohort sizes mean these percentages can swing noticeably from year to year, which helps explain some of the volatility in Caliche's rankings over the past decade.

Where Caliche truly stands out is in student engagement and persistence. The school has a 94.4% graduation rate (versus roughly 82–83% statewide), a dropout rate that has been as low as 0.0%, and chronic absenteeism that improved dramatically from 27.2% in 2023-2024 to just 13.6% in 2024-2025 — far better than the 27.3% rate at Sterling and the 51.6% rate at Peetz Junior-Senior High School. Caliche also has the lowest student-teacher ratio in the area at 9.1, suggesting small classes and individualized attention. These results are especially noteworthy given that 42.3% of students now receive free or reduced-price lunch, up from 30.4% two years earlier; the school continues to keep students in school and on track despite those challenges.