Original Research by School Decision on James Madison Preparatory School
James Madison Preparatory School is a public charter school in Tempe, Arizona, serving grades six through twelve as a single-school charter district. The school sits in a city shaped heavily by Arizona State University’s main campus, where the northern half has a fairly dense, urbanized development pattern and the southern portions are more auto-oriented with strip malls and lower-density residential areas. Tempe itself is an inner suburb of Phoenix, with a mixed commercial and residential character and a downtown that intertwines with the university rather than sitting apart.
The school’s enrollment is small for a secondary school. The student body is predominantly white, with a substantial Hispanic minority and smaller shares of Asian, Black, multiracial, and Native American students. Information on the share of students eligible for free or reduced-price meals, students with disabilities, and English learners was not available in the data, so a family looking for that kind of profile would need to ask the school directly.
State assessment results are suppressed for every tested grade and subject in the most recent year. The reason is the small number of students tested in each grade, which triggers the state’s privacy rules for small groups. That means there are no publicly reported proficiency rates for math, English language arts, or science at the grade level from the AASA and AzSci assessments. The school’s own multi-year trend data exists but is not broken down in a way that allows comparison with other schools. The neighbor comparison fact-set, which looks at districts across Maricopa County, could not calculate a proficiency index because these figures were missing. In short, a parent cannot gauge this school’s academic performance using standard state testing data in the usual way.
The school’s program offerings were not provided in the data we received, so this narrative cannot describe what courses, electives, or pathways are available. That gap may be worth exploring directly with the school if a family were still considering it.
The most consequential fact about James Madison Preparatory School is that it will close at the end of the 2025–2026 school year. The decision, publicly reported by the school itself, was based on declining enrollment and financial sustainability. This closure eliminates the entire district, since this is the only school in it. For any family reading this narrative after that closure date, the school no longer exists. For families who may have been enrolled, the transition to another school is already underway or completed.
The housing context in the surrounding area is that Tempe is a growing suburb with a mix of housing types. Home values in the zip code are close to the state average, and rents are comparable. The city continues to develop commercially and residentially, anchored by ASU and major employers. The school’s location on South McClintock Drive is in the southern part of Tempe, near the IKEA and Arizona Mills shopping areas, in a part of the city with more typical suburban infrastructure.
For a family reading this, the bottom line is straightforward: this school is not a viable option for new enrollment, and its academic record from state tests is largely invisible due to small-group suppression. The school’s own decision to close makes further investigation moot for most families.
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