The reported proficiency rate for English language arts is 58%.
Original Research by School Decision on New School for the Arts Middle School (80985)
New School for the Arts Middle School is a small charter district in Tempe, Arizona, that operates a single school serving grades six through eight. With an enrollment of a few dozen students, it is one of the smallest districts in Maricopa County. The student body is predominantly white, with a substantial Hispanic population and smaller shares of students who identify as two or more races, Black, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Asian. Data on economic disadvantage and special education status were not available.
Because the school is small and many tested groups have very few students, the state suppressed most of its assessment results to protect individual privacy. For mathematics and science, the proficiency rates for all three grade levels were suppressed. For English language arts, results were reported for seventh and eighth grade but not for sixth. Seventh graders posted a rate that indicates a strong majority met the state’s proficiency standard. Eighth graders, by contrast, scored at a level that points to a significant portion performing below that standard. Across all tested subjects and grades for which a rate could be calculated, the school’s overall proficiency index places it above the midpoint among Maricopa County’s districts. Chronic absenteeism, a concern in many Arizona schools, is relatively low here compared to the county median; the school’s rate sits above the midpoint among the county’s districts. Per-pupil current spending falls in the middle range of the county distribution, with a per-pupil figure close to the county median.
The school’s name suggests a focus on the arts, but no specific program details were available in the data provided, so a parent would need to contact the school directly to learn about course offerings in music, visual arts, theater, or dance. The district does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report. The school’s website was not listed in the source data.
This is a small, single-site district with a middle school cohort that appears to produce uneven academic results across grade levels. The strongest signal is in seventh-grade English language arts, while eighth-grade performance is weaker. The small size means student privacy protections limit how much the state can report, which can make it harder for families to gauge progress schoolwide. For families considering this school, a direct conversation with the administration about academic trends, arts programming, and how the school supports students who are not yet meeting proficiency standards would be useful. The chronic absenteeism figure is a positive indicator relative to peer districts. The school serves a mid-range spending level, consistent with its size. No recent district-level changes, such as boundary shifts or curriculum overhauls, were found in available sources, so families should expect a stable, small environment centered on its arts identity.
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