Summary:
Zip code 85204 has three schools: Mesa High School and Sun Valley High School, serving grades 9–12, and Arizona Conservatory for Arts and Academics, serving grades 6–12. Together they enroll 3,813 students, though school sizes vary widely, from 235 to 3,233. The most consequential difference for high-school completion is between Mesa and Sun Valley: graduation rates were 88% and 21%, respectively, a 67-point gap.
Arizona Conservatory stands out in 11th-grade science, with 42% proficiency compared with Mesa’s 8% and the state’s 19%; it also leads the reported all-grade ELA results, 40% to Mesa’s 30%. Mesa leads the reported all-grade math results, 24% to 18%, though both are below the state’s 33%. Mesa’s graduation rate was 8 points above the state’s 80%, and its 3% dropout rate was 3 points below the state’s 5%. Sun Valley’s graduation rate was 60 points below the state, while its 21% dropout rate was 16 points above it. The test results do not show one school leading across every subject.
SchoolDigger’s statewide rankings improved in the latest listed years for Mesa and Arizona Conservatory: Mesa rose from the 24th to the 38th percentile between 2023–24 and 2025–26, while Arizona Conservatory rose from the 61st to the 83rd percentile between 2023–24 and 2024–25. Sun Valley’s percentile increased from 2 in 2018–19 to 35 in 2020–21, then slipped to 32 in 2021–22. Ratios range from 19.5 students per teacher at Arizona Conservatory to 23 at Sun Valley, with Mesa at 20.6; the figures do not establish that ratios explain school results. All-grade ELA and math results are suppressed for Sun Valley, and comparisons across schools are limited by Arizona Conservatory’s different grade span and by rankings drawn from changing pools of schools.
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