The reported proficiency rate for English language arts is 22%.
Original Research by School Decision on Don Mensendick School
Don Mensendick School is a regular public school in the Glendale Elementary District serving kindergarten through eighth grade. It sits within a large, suburban city that borders Phoenix, a place with a mix of historic neighborhoods, major retail corridors, sports venues, and industrial employers like Honeywell Aerospace. The city is growing steadily, and its housing market shows typical home values that are below the national average, making it a relatively more affordable part of the Phoenix metro area.
The school’s enrollment is moderate for a K-8 campus, and its student body is predominantly Hispanic, with a smaller share of Black students and a small white population. This composition is a plain characteristic of the community it serves. The school does not operate as a charter or magnet school; it is a standard neighborhood school within the district.
On state assessments for the most recent school year, the available testing data is limited. Across nearly every grade level and subject tested, proficiency results for all students were suppressed, meaning the state did not release them for public reporting. Only one score was reported: eighth-grade English language arts, where about a fifth of students met the proficiency standard. A multi-year trend view shows that the school's overall proficiency in math and English language arts, averaged across grades, has been very low, landing in the bottom quartile when compared with other schools in Maricopa County. Parents should be aware that this performance level is a clear soft spot. A parent may want to look into this further with the school to understand the support systems in place for students who are not yet meeting grade-level expectations.
Because Don Mensendick serves only grades K-8, there is no high school graduation rate to report. The school is part of the Glendale Elementary District, which is one of several districts serving parts of Glendale; high school students in this attendance zone would move on to a separate high school district after eighth grade.
The school’s website was not provided in the available data, and no information about specific program offerings, such as gifted education, arts, or career pathways, was available. A parent interested in enrichment or specialized academic tracks would need to contact the district or the school directly. No discipline data, attendance rates, teacher staffing ratios, or civil rights metrics were present in the information reviewed. The absence of these details makes it hard to assess the full school environment.
For a family weighing this school, the core facts are a student body that is heavily Hispanic and low-income, a very low level of academic proficiency on the one test score that was reported, and a location in a growing but older suburban part of Glendale where housing costs are below the national norm. The school’s strengths are not visible in the available data, and the gaps in reporting mean a family would need to visit, ask questions about academic intervention, and gauge the school culture firsthand.
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