CMAS, SY 2024-25
All grades, all students. % Met or Exceeded Expectations.English Language Arts
85.9%
State avg 44.9%
District avg 65.6%
County avg 60.0%
+1.6pp since 2023-24
Mathematics
71.1%
State avg 36.1%
District avg 55.1%
County avg 51.5%
-0.8pp since 2023-24
Science
83.8%
State avg 36.4%
District avg 57.8%
County avg 51.8%
+3.8pp since 2023-24
What this means: On the CMAS, Colorado's statewide test, about 86 of every 100 students at this school read and write at grade level, about 71 of 100 do math at grade level, and about 84 of 100 are at grade level in science. Across all Colorado schools, those numbers are about 45, 36, and 36. Reading and writing scores are up about 2 points since 2023, while math scores have held steady and science scores are up about 4 points.
BeatsExpectations
Demographically-adjusted score · methodologyTier
OUTPERFORMING
Top 10% of CO schools after controlling for student poverty
Actual proficiency
79.2%
composite math + reading, all grades
Predicted
60.3%
based on CO schools with similar FRL share
Beats by
+18.9pp
above demographic expectation
What this means: About 79% of students here test proficient in math and reading, well above the roughly 60% typical for Colorado schools with a similar share of low-income students. BeatsExpectations ranks schools against others at the same poverty level, not by raw scores, so a school can post high scores and still fall short of its prediction, or post lower scores and still beat it. This school clears its prediction by about 19 points, placing it in Colorado's top 10%.
BeatsExpectations runs a per-state regression of proficiency on free/reduced-lunch share, then scores each school by residual.
How this is calculated →What is CMAS?
Colorado public-school students in grades 3 through 8 take the Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) in English Language Arts and Math each spring. Science CMAS is administered at grades 5, 8, and 11.
What does "% Met or Exceeded Expectations" mean?
It is the percentage of students at the school who scored at "Met Expectations" or "Exceeded Expectations" on the CMAS 5-level performance scale (Did Not Yet Meet, Partially Met, Approached, Met, Exceeded). Met and above is Colorado's grade-level benchmark. A higher number is better.
What does 85.9% mean for English Language Arts at Southern Hills Middle School?
It means about 85.9 percent of students tested at Southern Hills Middle School performed at grade level or above on the CMAS English Language Arts test in 2024-25. The statewide average for Colorado that year was 44.9%. The other students fell into the lower performance levels.
How is the state average calculated?
It is a weighted average, not a simple average of each school's number. We multiply each public school's score by how many of its students tested, add those together for all schools in Colorado, and divide by the total students tested that year. This way a big school with 1,500 students counts more than a small school with 50 students, which is the right way to ask "how did the typical student do this year?". District and county averages on this page use the same method, just scoped to that district or county.
Where does this data come from?
Colorado Department of Education (CDE), Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS). School-level overall results published annually by CDE. Headline metric is the cumulative "Met or Exceeded Expectations" rate (top 2 of CMAS's 5-level performance scale).
How often is it updated?
CMAS is administered once a year (spring). Results are released by the state in the summer or early fall. We refresh this page after each annual release.
