The top reported proficiency rate is 11% in English language arts. The lowest is 8% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Hope Online Learning Academy Middle School
HOPE Online Learning Academy Middle School is a charter school within Colorado’s Douglas County School District, serving grades six through eight. It is listed as a regular school, its campus located in Englewood. The school is notably small among middle schools serving the region.
The student body is predominantly Hispanic, with the remainder being largely white, very small numbers of Black and Asian students, and a very small share identifying as two or more races. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The data set does not include counts for students with an Individualized Education Program or for English learners, leaving an incomplete picture of the special-population makeup a parent may want to discuss directly with the school.
On state assessments administered in the 2023-2024 school year, HOPE Online Learning Academy Middle School recorded proficiency rates on the Colorado Measures of Academic Success that are substantially below district and state benchmarks. In math, the share of students scoring proficient or advanced was roughly 8 percent. In English language arts, the share was roughly 11 percent. Science results for the eighth grade were suppressed in state reporting, meaning the precise count of proficient students was not released; the average scale score was below what one would see in the Douglas County district overall. These are weak attainment numbers by the measures available. The participation rate on both math and ELA tests was in the low-to-mid 80s, below the 95 percent threshold, which means the results represent less than the full enrollment. A parent may want to ask the school about the underlying academic program and what supports are in place for students who are not meeting benchmarks.
The school is a charter within Douglas County, but the comparison tool used here looks at districts across the county. With only a small number of districts in that set, no direct comparative positioning was available for HOPE Online Learning Academy Middle School itself; the field notes that the cohort was too small for a proficiency index comparison. There is no graduation rate reported, because this is a middle school.
There is no publicly reported information in this data set about course offerings, staffing ratios, attendance, or disciplinary incidents. The absence of these fields limits a parent’s ability to assess class sizes, chronic absence, or the breadth of the academic program beyond what the test scores suggest.
Englewood, where the school is physically located, is an older first-ring suburb south of Denver with a distinct downtown area that has been redeveloped around the former Cinderella City mall site into a transit-oriented civic and retail hub. The city’s housing stock varies by quadrant: older homes and a walkable grid in the northwest, industrial and production facilities in the southwest, and newer apartment-heavy development in the southeast Hampden Hills area. Healthcare is the dominant industry, anchored by Swedish Medical Center and Craig Hospital. The city has light rail access, a free trolley, and off-street trail connections along the South Platte River. Much of the city was built up through a post-war boom, and recent growth has been infill and redevelopment of obsolete commercial sites.
The Douglas County district that authorizes HOPE Online has passed recent voter-approved measures that may matter to families. In 2022, voters approved a mill levy override for teacher and staff compensation and mental health and social-emotional learning supports. In 2024, voters approved both a bond package for new construction, safety upgrades, and facility renovations and a separate mill levy override for staff recruitment and retention. The district also implemented a new evidence-based literacy curriculum across elementary schools beginning in the 2023-2024 school year. These are district-level investments; how they reach a charter middle school would be something a parent would want to confirm with HOPE Online’s administration.
For a family considering this school, the test results suggest a student body that is, in aggregate, performing far below typical state proficiency levels, and the school’s small size and charter status mean it operates under a different governance structure than a traditional neighborhood school. The available data does not include many of the metrics families often use to evaluate a school, such as teacher experience or chronic absenteeism, so a careful conversation with the school and a visit to the campus would be especially important.
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