Agua Caliente School, Tucson AZ - Test Scores & Data

Original Research by School Decision on Agua Caliente School

Agua Caliente School is a regular public school serving pre-kindergarten through sixth grade within the Tanque Verde Unified District, located on the eastern edge of Tucson in Pima County. The school sits in an area of the city that is largely residential and suburban in character, with a feel that is distinct from Tucson’s denser central core. Families who live near the school are in a part of town where housing values are notably high relative to much of the Tucson metro area; the typical home value in the immediate zip code is well above the state average, and rents reflect that premium as well. The school itself is a neighborhood elementary and middle school in a district that has maintained a budget override for years, and voters renewed that override in 2024 to continue funding full-day kindergarten, art, music, physical education, and smaller class sizes. The override is a direct factor in the programs the school can offer.

Academically, Agua Caliente posts strong results on Arizona’s state assessments. The school’s overall proficiency index, which averages performance across tested subjects and grades, places it in the top quartile when compared to other schools within Pima County. In both math and English language arts, rates of proficiency are solid, though they show a pattern familiar in many schools: the highest percentages come in the earlier grades, with some softening by fifth and sixth grade. For example, third-grade math proficiency is very strong, and fourth-grade English language arts is similarly strong. By fifth and sixth grade, the math figures are lower, and the fifth-grade English language arts score is a softer spot. Science results for fifth-grade students, which the state tests at that grade level, also show that roughly half of students met proficiency standards. A parent may want to ask the school how they support students who are not yet at the proficient mark in the upper elementary years.

The data do not include information on chronic absenteeism, discipline rates, staffing ratios, or course access, so it is not possible to speak to those dimensions from the available record. Free or reduced-price meal eligibility figures are also absent, as are counts of students with individualized education plans and English learners. The enrollment itself is moderate for a school serving this grade span, and the student body is predominantly white, with a substantial Hispanic minority making up the next largest group, and very small numbers of students from other racial and ethnic backgrounds.

The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report. The student population is young enough that state testing begins in third grade, and the school has no testing data for its pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, first, or second graders, which is typical for those grade levels. The available test results from the most recent school year provide a snapshot of how the school performs now, but there is only a single year of comparable data in the record, which makes it impossible to assess whether performance is trending up or down over time.

Agua Caliente occupies a specific niche: a high-cost, suburban pocket of eastern Tucson, serving elementary and middle school students within a district that has made a consistent financial commitment to enrichment programs. The academic picture is one of generally strong proficiency with a slight decline in the upper elementary grades, which is the kind of pattern that families focused on the transition to middle school or to a different school for seventh grade may want to examine closely.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 374%

School 74% · District 73% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▲ 30 pts above state median · ▲ 32 pts above county median

Grade 469%

School 69% · District 75% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▲ 25 pts above state median · ▲ 23 pts above county median

Grade 552%

School 52% · District 55% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▲ 10 pts above state median · ▲ 11 pts above county median

Grade 653%

School 53% · District 58% · ▼ 5 pts below district

▲ 17 pts above state median · ▲ 16 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 370%

School 70% · District 60% · ▲ 10 pts above district

▲ 30 pts above state median · ▲ 31 pts above county median

Grade 475%

School 75% · District 73% · ▲ 2 pts above district

▲ 28 pts above state median · ▲ 25 pts above county median

Grade 555%

School 55% · District 58% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▲ 14 pts above state median · ▲ 11 pts above county median

Grade 665%

School 65% · District 68% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▲ 22 pts above state median · ▲ 20 pts above county median

Science

Grade 552%

School 52% · District 50% · ▲ 2 pts above district

▲ 15 pts above state median · ▲ 12 pts above county median

This schoolTanque Verde Unified District (4408), same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.