The top reported proficiency rate is 60% in English language arts. The lowest is 38% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Powell Junior High School
Powell Junior High School is an inactive school within the Mesa Unified District in Mesa, Arizona. Because it is no longer operating, the data available about it is limited and dates to a single school year, well over a decade ago. This means the picture a parent or resident can get is partial, and a reader should understand the school as a historical entity rather than a current option.
The school was a regular public junior high, serving what the directory lists as "M through M," a likely reference to middle grades. The only academic results come from the 2009-10 school year on the AIMS assessment. In seventh grade math, roughly two out of five students scored proficient or above, while in eighth grade math the share was slightly higher, nearing half. English language arts results were stronger: in seventh grade, slightly more than half of students scored proficient or above, and in eighth grade about three out of five did. Science results for eighth graders were similar to math, with roughly two out of five scoring proficient or above. Across all tested subjects and grades, the school’s overall proficiency index placed it above the midpoint relative to districts in Maricopa County, meaning its performance was a bit stronger than the typical district in that wide comparison set. The assessment was the AIMS, a combination of regular and alternate assessments, with proficiency defined as levels three and four.
There is no enrollment data, no demographic breakdown, no free or reduced-price lunch information, no information on special education or English learner populations. No information on discipline, staffing, chronic absenteeism, or graduation rate is available. Because the school is inactive, these gaps are not surprising, but they do mean that any characterization of what the student body was like or how the school supported different groups is not possible from this data.
The school sat in Mesa, a large, sprawling suburban city east of Phoenix that is the third-largest in Arizona. Mesa is overwhelmingly auto-oriented, with wide arterial roads and strip commercial development defining most of its built environment. Daily life depends heavily on driving, though downtown Mesa along Main Street offers a more walkable pocket with the Mesa Arts Center, local shops, and breweries, and Valley Metro light rail connects that downtown to Tempe and Phoenix. The city has grown rapidly since World War II, expanding eastward from an older, denser western section into newer suburban developments all the way to the city's boundary with Apache Junction and Queen Creek. Major employers include Boeing, Banner Health, Mesa Public Schools itself, and aerospace and logistics clusters around Falcon Field and Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. The district, Mesa Unified, is one of the largest in Arizona, and a search for recent district-level changes found little of lasting impact to report.
The housing context in the school's zip code area shows home values that were roughly in line with the national median, while rents were moderate. The ratio of rent to income was manageable for a typical household, but the estimated monthly mortgage payment was notably higher than the median rent, reflecting the gap between renting and buying. The national unemployment rate at the time of this data was modest, and median household income was above the national figure.
The key takeaway is that Powell Junior High School no longer operates. The academic data that does exist comes from a single year and shows a school where English language arts proficiency was a relative strength and math and science proficiency were weaker, but the broader picture of the school's function and community is lost to time. A parent or resident considering Mesa's schools today would need to look at current active schools in the Mesa Unified District rather than this closed campus.
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