Cave Creek Unified District

Cave Creek Unified District includes seven schools: three elementary schools, one middle school, one high school and two alternative schools, serving students from elementary through high school. Among the five schools with reported all-grades AASA results, the average is 63% in English language arts (ELA) and 59% in math, compared with state figures of 41% and 33%. Results vary considerably, especially in math, and the clearest overall standout is Horseshoe Trails Elementary School, which leads the elementary schools in every reported grade-and-subject comparison.

Horseshoe Trails and Black Mountain Elementary School are the strongest elementary performers: across grades 3–5, their average ELA and math results are 75% and 68%, respectively, compared with 49% at Desert Willow Elementary School. That puts Horseshoe Trails about 6 points ahead of Black Mountain and 25 points ahead of Desert Willow on these matched results. The widest gap is in fifth-grade math: Horseshoe Trails scores 78%, while Desert Willow scores 36%, 2 points below the state figure. Among all-grades results, Horseshoe Trails also leads in ELA and math at 74% and 75%; the lowest reported results are 55% at Desert Willow and Sonoran Trails Middle School in ELA, and 45% at both in math. AASA results for Desert Sun Academy and Cave Creek Academy of Excellence are suppressed, so their AASA performance cannot be compared.

SchoolDigger rankings improved from 2023–24 to 2025–26 at Cactus Shadows High School (75th to 85th percentile), Black Mountain (83rd to 91st) and Horseshoe Trails (89th to 96th), while Desert Willow fell from the 84th to the 65th percentile; Sonoran Trails was nearly unchanged, at 76th and 75th. These rankings are useful context, but they are not test-score trends. Ratios also do not follow a simple achievement pattern: Horseshoe Trails has the highest reported elementary student–teacher ratio, 17.7, while Desert Willow has the lowest, 14.7. Cactus Shadows has a 96% graduation rate, essentially matching the district and 16 points above the state; Desert Sun’s fifth-grade science result, 35%, is just 1 point above the state.