The top reported proficiency rate is 11% in English language arts. The lowest is 9% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Lansing Elementary Community School
Lansing Elementary Community School serves preschool through fifth grade as a regular public school in Aurora, part of the Aurora Joint District No. 28. The school sits within a sprawling suburban city that is Colorado’s third largest, a heavily car-dependent metro area with a distributed civic footprint and strong institutional anchors in the Anschutz Medical Campus and Buckley Space Force Base. The housing market in the school’s zip code reflects modest costs relative to the broader region: home values have recently seen a slight decline, and rents have eased as well. For a family, this part of Aurora offers a more attainable entry point into the metro area’s housing market than many Denver-adjacent communities.
The district itself is in a period of active restructuring. Voters approved a bond measure in late 2022 that funds facility upgrades and modernization across the district, and the district is also carrying out a school consolidation and repurposing process that has shifted assignments and altered which buildings are open. These are real, ongoing changes that affect which elementary school a child attends and what kind of physical environment they find there.
Lansing’s enrollment draws from a heavily diverse student body. The largest demographic group is Hispanic students, who make up a majority of the school, followed by Black students, then White students, Asian students, and students identifying as two or more races. A very high share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting a student population with significant economic need. The school is large enough to have sections across each grade from kindergarten through fifth grade, with a prekindergarten program that enrolls a sizable cohort.
State testing data from the most recent year shows that proficiency rates in both math and English language arts are very low. On the Colorado Measures of Academic Success, the share of students scoring at proficient or advanced levels was in the single digits for math and just above that for English language arts. Participation rates were high, so these results reflect the performance of nearly all enrolled students in the tested grades. Science results for fifth graders were not reported due to data suppression, which typically happens when the number of students who met proficiency is too small to release publicly. The school’s overall proficiency index places it in the bottom quartile among the districts in Arapahoe County. There is no multi-year trend data provided, so it is not possible to see whether this represents a decline, stability, or an improvement from prior years.
The school’s grade band—ending at fifth grade—means there is no graduation rate to consider, no high school course pathways, and no advanced placement or dual-credit offerings to evaluate. These are simply not part of what the school provides. What a family can evaluate is the early-elementary experience: the peer environment is one in which the student body faces concentrated poverty, and academic outcomes on state assessments are low. A parent considering Lansing may want to ask the school about the specific supports in place for literacy and math instruction, how the school uses its federal Title I funding, and what interventions or enrichment are available. Given the district’s ongoing consolidation work, it would also be wise to confirm whether Lansing’s attendance boundaries or long-term status are affected by the repurposing process.
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