Summary:
There is only one middle school in zip code 80229: Thornton Middle School, which serves grades 6–8 and is part of the Adams 12 Five Star Schools district. This is a large school with 721 students, and the vast majority (84.19%) qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating a high-poverty student population.
Thornton Middle School is facing severe academic challenges. Its state rank is 467 out of 469 Colorado middle schools, placing it in the bottom 1% and earning it 0 stars in the most recent ranking years. Proficiency rates are in the single digits across all core subjects: only 7.5% of students are proficient in English language arts, 4.7% in math, and 5.0% in science. These numbers are dramatically below the district and state averages—for example, math proficiency is about 31–33 percentage points lower than the state average. Grade-level results are equally concerning: 6th grade math proficiency is just 3.1%, and 7th grade math is 3.6%, while the highest math score (8th grade at 7.1%) is still far below the state average.
Chronic absenteeism is a critical issue, with 62.3% of students chronically absent—more than double the district rate (32.2%) and the state rate (28.4%). This means more than 6 in 10 students are missing enough school to seriously disrupt learning. Recent test score trends are mostly flat or declining: ELA proficiency dropped from 9.8% to 7.5%, science fell from 6.2% to 5.0%, and math barely moved from 4.5% to 4.7%. While the school’s dropout rate (0.9%) is relatively low, the combination of extreme academic distress, high poverty, and widespread absenteeism points to a school in need of intensive, wraparound support.
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