Original Research by School Decision on Evit - Desert Mountain High School
EVIT – Desert Mountain High School is a career and technical school serving grades nine through twelve, located within Scottsdale, Arizona, and operating as part of the East Valley Institute of Technology. This is not a traditional comprehensive high school; it is a vocational and technical school where students typically attend part-time while also enrolled at their home high school, or full-time in certain programs. The school’s primary identity is as a place where students gain hands-on training in specialized career fields, rather than as a standalone provider of general academics.
Because EVIT – Desert Mountain High School is a career and technical school, the state testing data that conventionally measures academic proficiency in core subjects was not available. This gap reflects the nature of the school: it focuses on career and technical education pathways, and many students take their core academic courses through their home high schools. A parent reading this should understand that the absence of proficiency scores does not mean the school is unaccountable; it means the school's primary mission and assessment framework are centered on industry credentials, certifications, and workplace skills rather than on state standardized tests in math, reading, and science. The school also has no reported four-year graduation rate, which is common for a part-time CTE campus where graduation is handled by the student’s home high school.
Enrollment data for the school showed a total of zero students reported across all grade levels, which is likely an artifact of the reporting method for this type of school. Many career and technical schools count students through their home districts, so official enrollment figures for this site may not be captured as a full-time equivalent headcount. No data was available for free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility, special education services, or English learner status. Without these figures, it is not possible to characterize the economic or special-education profile of the student population from the data at hand.
Scottsdale, where the school sits, is a large city that spans 31 miles north to south and is divided into distinct areas: South Scottsdale, Old Town, Central Scottsdale (the Shea Corridor), and North Scottsdale. Tourism is the city’s primary employer, though the Scottsdale Airpark area near the airport is a major employment center in finance, retail, technology, and manufacturing. The housing market is expensive, with home values above the state and national benchmarks. The city has grown rapidly over the past two decades, with ongoing residential and commercial development pushing northward into desert areas. The McDowell Sonoran Preserve, the largest urban wilderness in the United States, anchors the northern part of the city and offers extensive trails.
The East Valley Institute of Technology, the district that runs this school, is a regional CTE provider. A search for recent district changes did not turn up referendums, bond measures, curriculum overhauls, or tax changes that would materially affect a family’s decision, beyond the standard operation of the district’s career and technical programs.
For a family considering EVIT – Desert Mountain High School, the central question is whether they want a student to pursue structured career training in fields such as health sciences, automotive technology, construction, cosmetology, information technology, or other trades while still in high school. This is not a school chosen for its state test scores or graduation rate, because those metrics are not part of its profile. It is a school chosen for the specific career pathways it offers, and a family should look directly at the school’s program catalog and learn how enrollment works alongside a student’s home high school schedule.
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