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A+ Answers: Where are students of color graduating at a high rate in Colorado?

The community voted and 62% of voters wanted to know, “Where are students of color graduating at a high rate in Colorado?” Over the past several years, Colorado’s graduation rates for all groups of students has been increasing, across the state. However, when looking at where students of color are graduating at the highest rate, it’s clear that many of the schools with the highest graduation rates are concentrated in the 1-25 corridor, from Fort Collins down to Colorado Springs. This is true for white students as well save for a notable outlier: Grand Junction has some of the highest graduation rates in the state for white students.


Data Note:
To calculate which schools had the highest graduation rates for students of color we focused on schools that were amongst the 10% of schools statewide with the largest classes of students for a different racial group. This is because many schools in Colorado have 2 or 3 students of color, all of whom graduate. However, we felt that the spirit of the question was really where do students of color have the best odds of graduating on-time. To answer this, we wanted to look at schools with significant populations of students of color and didn’t want rankings to be based on schools with small populations. This is one way to look at this question, but many other methods could also be used. We felt this method ensured we were focused on the schools where the vast majority of students who belong to smaller demographic groups attend.

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