Colorado school safety

El Paso County turns up twice in the short list of Colorado districts that rank well on this page — once as Academy School District No. 20, once as El Paso County Colorado School District 49. That is unusual on a list this short, and it is worth saying plainly what it does and does not mean. It is not a finding about that county's children. It means schools in both districts filed records complete enough to compare, and those reported rates placed the districts above most ranked districts nationally: Academy 20 safer than 93%, District 49 safer than 83%.

What you can learn here

This page is built from the 2021-22 federal Civil Rights Data Collection. Colorado has 1,960 schools in it. We publish a safety score for 1,119 of them. A score means we believe the school's records — enough was reported that we can compare the school to roughly 1,500 schools nationwide of similar size teaching the same grades. Where a school shows no score, that is the method working. Some schools reported almost nothing and are small enough that a true zero is ordinary. Others are the size where schools normally report several incidents, or ten or more, and reported close to none. We call that doubtful reporting. It means records we cannot verify. It is not a claim about violence.

In Colorado, 203 schools fall into that doubtful group — 10.4% of the state, against 11.3% nationally. Colorado's paperwork looks about like the country's. That is a statement about filing behavior and nothing else. The comparison behind every grade is national, never adjusted by state, because differences between states in this data are differences in how schools report.

Colorado has 186 school districts. Only 40 have enough scoreable schools to rank, which is why most districts here carry no rank. The rest are small, or too little of their reporting held up. Even among the ranked, coverage varies: 47 of the 56 schools in Boulder Valley's scored set could be scored, but 16 of 34 in Greeley's and 19 of 35 in Pueblo District No. 60's. Start with your own school's grade, then read the district around it.

Safest ranked cities in Colorado

Percentile is against all ranked U.S. cities (higher = safer). Only cities with ≥5 trustworthy-data schools are ranked. Home value is Zillow's ZHVI.

Safest ranked districts

Every Colorado city with schools

Every Colorado school district