Summary:
Payson has one listed middle school, Rim Country Middle School, serving grades 6–8, so families have no second listed local school to compare with it. In 2025–26, 30% of students were proficient in English language arts (ELA), compared with 41% statewide, and 21% were proficient in math, compared with 33% statewide. The most important finding is that the school’s all-grade proficiency rates trail Arizona’s in both subjects: by 11 percentage points in ELA and 12 in math.
There is no meaningful local top-versus-bottom school comparison because Rim Country is the only school listed. Within its grade-level results, 8th-grade math stands out as the closest to the state rate: 28% proficient, just 2 points below Arizona’s 30%. The gaps are larger in 6th-grade math (19% versus 30%, 11 points) and 7th-grade math (17% versus 27%, 10 points). ELA is below the state in all three grades, with results from 28% to 33% compared with state rates from 39% to 43%. The school’s grade-level ELA and math percentages match those of the Payson Unified District, though its all-grade results are 1 point lower in ELA and 2 points lower in math.
SchoolDigger’s statewide ranking improved in the latest year shown, but remains below its 2023–24 level: Rim Country rose from the 25th percentile in 2024–25 to the 28th percentile in 2025–26, after reaching the 33rd percentile in 2023–24. Its latest ranking is 388th of 536 schools, with one star. These rankings are not proficiency scores, and the supplied results do not establish a multi-year achievement trend. The school has 478 students and a student-teacher ratio of 16.3; its free/reduced-lunch rate is not reported. In 2024–25, 22% of 8th graders were proficient in science, 8 points below the state rate of 30%.
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