The top reported proficiency rate is 12% in English language arts. The lowest is 6% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Deane Elementary School
Deane Elementary School sits in Lakewood, a large, predominantly suburban city immediately west of Denver. Lakewood’s character is a mix of mid-century subdivisions, commercial strips along major highways, and newer mixed-use nodes like Belmar, a pedestrian-oriented redevelopment on the site of a former mall. The city lacks a traditional downtown; its civic and cultural life is distributed across large institutional campuses, including the Denver Federal Center and several higher education institutions. The housing market in the neighborhood around the school reflects a typical suburban pattern, with home values that have seen a modest recent decline, a dynamic that families weighing a home purchase may want to track.
Deane serves students from kindergarten through sixth grade. The school’s enrollment is large for an elementary school, and the student body is predominantly Hispanic, with a white minority and smaller shares of students who are Asian, Black, or of two or more races. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The percentages of students receiving special education services or classified as English learners were not reported in the available data; a parent should ask the school directly about how it supports students with those needs.
The district that operates Deane, Jefferson County School District R-1, has been through significant recent upheaval. In 2023, district leadership announced a plan to close sixteen schools due to declining enrollment and budget deficits, then reversed the decision after substantial community opposition. A committee formed in 2024 to study consolidation options, with recommendations pending, meaning families face continued uncertainty about future boundary and school changes. In a 2024 recall election, voters removed three school board members and replaced them, a shift driven by concerns about transparency and the handling of consolidation plans. The same year, voters approved a bond measure for capital improvements, safety upgrades, and technology enhancements—the first bond passed since a bond in the previous decade—so families can expect facility investments across the district in coming years. The district also adopted a new elementary literacy curriculum aligned with the science of reading framework that started in the 2023-24 school year.
State testing data for the most recent year shows that Deane’s proficiency rates in math, English language arts, and science stand well below the district and state averages. The share of students scoring at the proficient level in math is quite low, and the share in English language arts is also low. Science results, assessed at the fifth-grade level, show a similarly low figure. The school’s participation rates on these assessments were high. A parent considering Deane should look into this performance gap further with the school: what instructional strategies are in place, how the school addresses the needs of students who are below grade level, and what evidence of academic growth exists that might not be captured by a single year’s snapshot.
No data was available on chronic absenteeism, discipline rates, course access, or staffing ratios. These are important pieces of the school environment picture. The comparison fact-set, which would normally position Deane relative to other schools in Jefferson County, could not be run because the cohort of similar schools was too small to generate a meaningful comparison. That absence is a gap, not a signal.
For a family, Deane Elementary presents a clear set of trade-offs. It is an elementary school serving a diverse, high-poverty student body in a large suburban district undergoing governance and enrollment changes. Academic proficiency on state tests is low. A parent enrolling here would be wise to ask detailed questions about academic support, growth data, and the school’s response to the district’s shifting consolidation and curriculum landscape before making a decision.
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