Summary:
ZIP code 80002 in Arvada, Colorado contains four schools serving approximately 1,962 students in grades PK-8, with no high schools in the area: Drake Junior High School, Foster Dual Language Pk-8, Lawrence Elementary School, and Prospect Academy. Three of these schools belong to Jefferson County School District No. R-1, while Prospect Academy is chartered under the State Charter School Institute.
Drake Junior High School is the strongest school in the ZIP code by a wide margin, ranking in the 74th percentile of Colorado middle schools with a 4-star rating. It exceeds state averages in ELA (52.7% vs. 44.7%), math (47.5% vs. 37.3%), and science (51.2% vs. 35.4%), while serving a relatively affluent student body (18.9% free/reduced lunch). At the other end, Prospect Academy struggles severely with just 8.0% math proficiency and 5.0% ELA proficiency despite a low poverty rate of 22.3%. Lawrence Elementary School faces the highest needs in the area, with a 73.8% free/reduced lunch rate and a striking 47.9% chronic absenteeism rate. Foster Dual Language Pk-8 sits in the middle with 35.8% ELA and 23.3% math proficiency, though its 4th-grade ELA score of 57.1% exceeds state averages while its 6th-grade math score of 15.2% falls far below.
The most urgent red flags are attendance and achievement gaps. Lawrence's 47.9% chronic absenteeism rate and Prospect's 37.0% rate are far above the state average of 28.4%, and both schools show correspondingly low test scores. Notably, Drake achieves its strong results with the largest class sizes (19.6 student-teacher ratio), while Prospect Academy has the smallest classes (12.3) and the weakest outcomes, suggesting class size alone does not drive performance. With no high schools in 80002, these schools serve as the critical gateway for families, and the wide gap between Drake and the other three schools makes school choice particularly important.
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