Denver Public Schools will not close any schools in 2026, after four campuses pulled their state performance ratings up just enough to avoid a closure recommendation under the district's newest intervention policy. Oakland Elementary and Rocky Mountain Prep Noel each climbed from orange to yellow, Academy 360 held onto a green rating for a second straight year, and John F. Kennedy High School jumped from orange all the way to green.
The preliminary numbers, released by the Colorado Department of Education, show yellow as the second-highest of four rating tiers, with green at the top, orange third, and red the lowest. As reported by The Denver Post, the ratings are largely based on state test scores and determine which schools fall under scrutiny through Colorado's accountability clock, which allows the State Board of Education to order intervention after five years of low ratings.
Not every campus cleared the bar. Cheltenham Elementary, Ashley Elementary and Traylor Academy each earned a preliminary orange rating in 2026, and the Post's reporting notes all three now carry three consecutive years of low ratings. If their ratings stay orange or slip to red again next fall, those three schools could face a closure recommendation under the district's Reimagine framework, which is reserved for schools with four straight years of low performance.
A New Framework With Real Stakes
Superintendent Alex Marrero introduced the School Transformation Process in 2025, according to the Post's reporting, and Denver Public Schools has said the policy calls for shuttering persistently low-performing campuses that don't turn things around. Under the framework, a school with one to three years of low ratings could be renewed or reconfigured — meaning consequences like principal dismissal, teacher reapplication, or grade-level cuts — while four consecutive years of low ratings could trigger a Reimagine designation, meaning closure or replacement.
That threat appears to have had an effect. Marrero said the closure threat prompted a response from school communities, and he attributed this year's progress to community involvement alongside assistance from district leaders, per the Post's account. Oakland Elementary, one of the schools that improved, was part of the district's Elevate Schools Network, a support initiative that also includes Cheltenham and Traylor — meaning the same targeted-resources program produced one clear success story and two campuses still waiting for theirs.
Academy 360 brings a longer history of low ratings into this year's green mark, its second in a row, while JFK High's jump from orange to green followed the school's participation in what the Post describes as the district's Data Mine improvement strategy. Both RMP Noel and JFK, along with Oakland, still face a caveat: each could face intervention next fall if its rating backslides to orange or red, since a single strong year doesn't erase the accountability clock.
District-Wide Numbers Point To Broader Gains
The four schools' turnarounds land inside a bigger, and largely positive, picture for Denver Public Schools this year. The district secured an overall preliminary Accredited, or green, rating on the state's District Performance Framework for a second consecutive year in August, marking its first back-to-back green ratings since before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Denver Public Schools.
Of the district's 164 rated campuses, 94 schools, or 57 percent, earned green ratings, 47 schools earned yellow, 21 schools earned orange, and just two schools landed in the red, per the district's own breakdown. Eleven Denver schools, including Abraham Lincoln High School and Academy 360, fully exited the state accountability clock altogether in 2026, while four others — JFK High, RMP Noel, Oakland Elementary, and Cole Arts and Science Academy — moved into a conditional On Watch status that requires a second consecutive year of improved ratings to fully clear.
Denver's gains track with a statewide pattern. Nearly two-thirds of Colorado's more than 1,700 public schools earned top-tier green ratings in 2026, and more than 50 schools across the state successfully exited the accountability clock altogether, according to Chalkbeat. The Colorado Department of Education will finalize this year's ratings later in the fall, and schools retain the ability to appeal their preliminary ratings to the state if they can produce additional academic data.
Centralized Coaching Replaces Old Autonomy Model
The School Transformation Process marks a real departure from how Denver used to run its lowest-performing schools. Under the policy, the district grouped struggling campuses into cohort networks that receive centralized coaching and standardized instructional models, a shift away from previous policies that had granted principals broad instructional autonomy, according to Chalkbeat's reporting on the strategy.
It's also a return to something Denver walked away from years ago. The district's last formal closure framework, called the School Performance Compact, was created roughly a decade earlier but abandoned in 2018 after closing only one school and replacing two others amid intense community pushback, Chalkbeat reported — meaning Denver had gone without an active closure policy tied to low test scores for years before Marrero's 2025 policy took its place.
Notably, the School Transformation Process did not require a school board vote to launch, since Marrero established it administratively in May 2025. But any actual school closure or replacement decision made under the policy starting in 2027 will require formal approval from the elected Denver Board of Education, whose members have expressed varied views on closing schools based on test scores, per Chalkbeat's coverage.
One wrinkle could complicate matters further if any of the three remaining at-risk schools reach the closure stage: when the district solicited applications from charter school operators to potentially take over or replace persistently low-performing campuses, zero charter schools had applied by July, according to Chalkbeat. District officials cited high uncertainty and difficulty as key factors — leaving district-led turnaround, for now, as the only option on the table.
Under the multi-year timeline of the current policy, the earliest any Denver public school could actually be closed or replaced for low test scores is spring of 2027, with any approved replacement school opening that fall. That leaves Cheltenham, Ashley and Traylor roughly a year to either climb out of orange territory or become the first test of whether Denver's elected board is willing to follow through on the framework its superintendent built. Denver Public Schools' recent moves haven't been limited to ratings — grade-level cuts at one STEAM academy followed within days of this year's results, underscoring how quickly the district's new policy can translate into changes on campus.
