Original Research by School Decision on Orton Academy
Orton Academy is a small regular public school in Colorado Springs serving second through eighth grade, and it operates with an unusual structure that parents should understand before evaluating its academic record. The school is part of the Education Reenvisioned Boces, a cooperative educational service agency rather than a traditional district, and it occupies a modest footprint with just over a hundred students distributed across seven grades, with the largest classes in the middle years. The student body is predominantly white, with a substantial Hispanic population and smaller shares of Black students and those identifying as two or more races; the data does not report the share of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, nor does it give information on students with disabilities or English learners, so a parent cannot assess the school's socioeconomic or special-education profile from the available record.
On state testing, Orton Academy presents an unusual picture. The school participated in Colorado's standardized assessments for math and English language arts in the 2023-24 school year, but the proficiency rates for all tested students are suppressed in the data, meaning the state did not release them. The school's average scale scores, which are reported, fall far below the thresholds that would indicate grade-level proficiency, and the participation rates were low, with roughly half of eligible students taking the math test and slightly more than half taking the English language arts test. For science, tested at grades five and eight, no students were recorded as tested at either grade level, though the participation rate for the group that did take the test was higher for fifth grade but well below half for eighth grade. A parent should look into this further with the school, as the low testing participation and suppressed proficiency data make it impossible to draw a reliable picture of academic performance from state results alone.
Colorado Springs itself is a large, fast-growing city shaped by the military, aerospace, and tourism economies, with a car-dependent layout spread across a broad plateau at the base of Pikes Peak. Housing values in the area are moderately high relative to the national median, though they have softened slightly in the most recent period, and rents have edged upward. The school's own zip code shows a similar pattern. For a family considering Orton Academy, the most important unknowns are academic: the state testing data does not provide a clear read on student achievement, and no information is available on programs, course access, staffing, or attendance. The school's grade span ends at eighth grade, so families will need to plan for a high school transition. The enrollment is small, which may appeal to parents looking for a close-knit environment, but the suppressed test scores and low participation rates are a gap that the school itself is best positioned to explain.
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