The reported proficiency rate for Science is 52%.
Original Research by School Decision on Painted Desert Montessori Llc
Painted Desert Montessori LLC was a charter school in Buckeye that served a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade student body using the Montessori approach. It is no longer open. The charter district that operated it closed in 2021, removing a public school option from the area.
Because the school is now inactive, much of the information a family would normally look for is either unavailable or comes from the years it was still operating. There is no current enrollment figure, no demographic breakdown, no information on how many students qualified for free or reduced-price meals, and no data on special education or English learner populations. No graduation rate exists because the school did not serve high school grades.
The available state test results are limited and come with important caveats. For the 2020-21 school year, math and English language arts proficiency rates were suppressed for every grade level, meaning the state did not publish them. Participation rates in those tests were low, in the range typical of a school where a modest share of students took the assessment. The most recent reported testing data comes from 2018-19 for science. In that year, fourth graders posted a proficiency rate that was above the midpoint among the tested group, while eighth graders’ science proficiency was lower. A broader composite measure that aggregates all tested subjects and grades from the available years places the school above the midpoint among the many school districts in Maricopa County, though this index draws on limited data.
The school was located in Buckeye, a city that has experienced some of the fastest population growth in the country. Buckeye began as an agricultural town and now encompasses a large planning area with many master-planned communities under development, giving the city a dispersed suburban character. The historic downtown along Monroe Avenue provides a traditional core, but most new residential development is in separate communities such as Verrado, Sundance, and Tartesso. The economy has been diversifying beyond agriculture into logistics, renewable energy, and manufacturing, with employers that include the state government, Walmart, and several school districts.
For families choosing a school today, Painted Desert Montessori LLC is not an active option. The closure means that households interested in a Montessori charter program in the Buckeye area would need to look elsewhere. The city’s rapid growth has brought many new master-planned communities, and with them additional school capacity from other public school districts serving the area. The data that remains from this school’s operating years is too sparse to draw a clear picture of its academic performance, and the low test participation rates in the final year raise questions that a parent might want to explore further with the district that oversaw it, were the school still open. As it stands, Painted Desert Montessori LLC is part of Buckeye’s recent educational history but not its current landscape.
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