School Spotlight: The Classical Academy, the Charter You Have to Wait For

School Spotlight is a Monument Independent series profiling the schools that serve Tri-Lakes families — every D38 school, plus The Classical Academy, the D20 charter that many Monument students call home. We’ve done Lewis-Palmer, Palmer Ridge, and Monument Academy. Here is the one that isn’t even in our district: The Classical Academy, the highest-ranked high school in this series — and, by a wide margin, the hardest to get into.

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The Classical Academy is the ringer in this series. It is not a D38 school at all — it’s a public charter authorized by Academy District 20 in northern Colorado Springs — but it belongs here because so many Tri-Lakes families make the drive, and because it is, on the numbers, the strongest high school any Monument student can attend. Founded in 1997 and now one of the largest charter systems in Colorado, TCA runs a content-rich classical curriculum with uniforms in the elementary grades (K–6) and a modest, conservative dress code for grades 7 and up, a “Great Books” sensibility, and a motto — “Excellence with Honor” — that it treats as a job description. Every student, K–12, also learns the Titan’s Creed, a short pledge to pursue “truth, beauty, and goodness,” to prize “virtue in scholarship, relationship, and citizenship,” and to value “responsibilities above rights.” The Colorado Department of Education named every TCA campus a John Irwin School of Excellence three years running; the state’s accountability framework has ranked the high school #2 in Colorado.

Academics: the top of the class

By every outside measure, TCA High School sits at the top of this series. US News ranks it #9 in Colorado and #465 nationally — the top 2% of American high schools — ahead of both Palmer Ridge and Lewis-Palmer; GreatSchools gives it a perfect 10 out of 10; Niche grades it an A and slots it #18 of 445 Colorado public high schools. The outcomes back the badges: a 95% graduation rate, an average SAT around 1250 against a national mark near 1024, and a reported average GPA of 3.65. The model is old-fashioned on purpose — a common classical core, heavy on literature, history, and writing — layered with Advanced Placement work and a College Pathways option that lets students earn college credit alongside classes at Pikes Peak State College.

How you get in — the catch

Here is the part every Tri-Lakes parent needs to understand before falling in love with the test scores: you mostly can’t just enroll. TCA has no open enrollment and is not an Academy District 20 “choice” option. It is a wait-list school — seats are offered strictly by wait-list position — and the list is enormous, with more than 5,400 students waiting across all grades. Many Tri-Lakes families add a child to the list at birth, years before kindergarten. Priority goes, in order, to the children of the school’s administration and faculty, then to siblings of currently enrolled students, then to residents of Academy District 20, and only then to everyone else, drawn from some fifteen surrounding districts.

In practice, that means the doors are widest at the bottom. Families who get in almost always get in early — kindergarten, or the first grade or two — and then those cohorts move up together, filling the building grade by grade. By the time a class reaches the upper elementary years there is rarely an open seat, and a high-school seat almost never opens on the list at all. So for a family moving to Monument with a teenager and no prior connection, the realistic ways into the TCA high school are narrow: have a younger sibling already enrolled, or have a parent who works for the school, which jumps the line. It is the rare case where the honest advice about a school is less “here’s how it performs” and more “here’s why you probably can’t send your ninth-grader there.”

Sports and activities: titles across the classifications

TCA bases most of its sports in CHSAA’s Class 3A, but where a program is dominant the state’s enrollment-and-success formula pushes it up a class — so the Titans turn up across 2A, 3A, and 4A depending on the sport. And lately they win. In November 2024 the football team captured the school’s first-ever state championship, beating Wellington 42-36 for the Class 2A title, three years after a one-point runner-up finish; the Titans returned to the 2A final in 2025 but lost the rematch to Wellington. The girls flag-football team, a year after losing the inaugural 4A final, came back to win it in 2025, blanking Mountain View 34-0. And cross country has become an outright dynasty: the girls have taken three straight 3A team titles — seven of the last eight — the boys swept in alongside them in 2025, and that run of dominance is bumping both programs up to 4A this year.

The loudest dynasty, though, wears band uniforms: the TCA marching band has won seven Colorado Bandmasters Association state championships (2017, 2018, and 2021 through 2025), and the chess team has three state titles of its own. The girls track team has won three consecutive state titles as well. Add a full slate of the usual sports — basketball, baseball, softball, soccer, volleyball, golf, wrestling — and TCA fields a competitive team in nearly everything.

What The Classical Academy does well

Almost everything the rankings measure. Top-2% academics, a 95% graduation rate, a strong SAT, and a coherent K–12 classical program give TCA the most decorated résumé of any school a Monument family can choose. The culture is a genuine draw: an explicit honor-and-character code (the Titan’s Creed), uniforms in the younger grades, and a band-and-chess tradition that says the school prizes the same discipline in the auditorium that it does in the classroom. When 5,400 families are willing to wait years for a seat, the market is telling you something.

Where there’s room to improve

The biggest knock on TCA isn’t academic; it’s access. A school you can’t get into is, for most late-arriving families, not really a choice at all, and the waitlist model — however fair by position — effectively sorts for families who planned around it from kindergarten. The structure isn’t for everyone, either: a dress code (uniforms in the younger grades), a prescribed classical core, and a north-Colorado-Springs commute of 20-plus minutes from Monument are features to some households and deal-breakers to others. And competing mostly in 2A and 3A means many athletic wins, real as they are, come against smaller schools than Palmer Ridge or Lewis-Palmer face. None of it dents the academics; all of it matters when you’re deciding whether TCA is a fit — assuming you can even get a seat.

The Tri-Lakes verdict

Across four spotlights, the pattern is clear. Lewis-Palmer and Palmer Ridge are the excellent, accessible neighborhood high schools; Monument Academy is the small classical charter still building its high school; and The Classical Academy is the top-of-the-table option that, for most families, you have to have been planning to attend for the better part of a decade. Our honest read: if your child is already in the TCA pipeline, it is as strong a high school as the region offers. If they aren’t, the two D38 comprehensives are outstanding schools you can actually enroll in this fall — which counts for a great deal.

Flavor file

The Classical Academy spans three northern-Colorado-Springs campuses, dresses its elementary students in uniforms — older grades follow a modest dress code — and hands out a “Titan of the Year” award to the staff member who best lives the school’s core values. Its homeschool arm, the Cottage School and College Pathways, shares a campus with Pikes Peak State College. And in the trivia that best captures the place: a school named for the classics has built its loudest dynasty not on a football field but in a marching band that has won the state championship seven times in nine years.

Sources & further reading

The Independent’s own coverage: our companion profiles of Lewis-Palmer, Palmer Ridge, and Monument Academy.

School, history & enrollment: The Classical Academy; the school’s waitlist information; NCES Common Core of Data.

Scores & rankings: US News Best High Schools; Niche; GreatSchools; Colorado Department of Education performance frameworks.

Athletics & activities: CHSAA, the Colorado Bandmasters Association, and Colorado Springs Gazette coverage of the 2021 3A football final and 2026 state track championships.

Statistics reflect the most recent year published per source. Spotted an error or have a Classical Academy story we should know? Email [email protected].

Next in the series: the Tri-Lakes elementary and middle schools.