Summary:
ZIP code 85213 has two middle schools, both serving grades 7–9 in Mesa Unified District: Stapley Junior High School and Poston Junior High School. Their results are very different, especially in math: Stapley’s all-grades score is 25 percentage points higher than Poston’s.
Stapley leads in every reported comparison. In 2025–26, its all-grades ELA score was 47% and math was 46%, compared with 36% and 21% at Poston. Stapley was also ahead in grade 8 science in 2024–25, with 41% compared with Poston’s 26%. Against state results, Stapley was 6 points higher in ELA and 13 points higher in math; Poston was 5 points lower in ELA and 12 points lower in math. In science, Stapley was 11 points above the state and Poston was 4 points below. The schools’ averages are close to state results overall, but that masks their sharply different scores.
SchoolDigger’s statewide rankings put Stapley higher, at 148th of 536 schools, in the 72nd percentile with 4 stars; Poston ranked 330th, in the 38th percentile with 2 stars. Both schools’ percentiles rose over the three reported years: Stapley gained 2 points, from 70 to 72, and Poston gained 15, from 23 to 38. These are changes in relative ranking, not evidence that test scores increased; the supplied ELA and math scores cover only one year. The schools have nearly identical student-teacher ratios—19.4 at Stapley and 19.5 at Poston—despite their score gap. Stapley’s reported spending was $6,541 per student in 2021–22, $874 less than Poston’s $7,415, but those older figures do not explain later results; free/reduced-lunch data are unavailable for both.
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