Summary:
The 85327 high-school list contains one school, Cactus Shadows High School, serving grades 8–12 with 1,362 students; it is part of the Cave Creek Unified District. The clearest takeaway is that the school’s supplied test results are consistently above state results, with its strongest advantage in math.
Because it is the only school listed, Cactus Shadows is both the highest and lowest school by default, not part of a meaningful local ranking. In 2025–26, 61% of students were proficient in all-grades ELA and 61% in math, compared with 41% and 33% statewide—a 20-point ELA advantage and a 28-point math advantage. Grade 11 results were also higher than the state: 61% in ELA versus 38%, and 61% in math versus 31%, gaps of 23 and 30 points. In 2024–25, grade 11 science proficiency was 29%, 10 points above the state’s 19%. The school’s 2024–25 graduation rate was 95.9%, compared with 80% statewide and 96.0% in the district—about 16 points above the state and 0.1 point below the district. With one school in the list, these figures do not support a meaningful comparison among local schools.
SchoolDigger’s reported ranking improved over the three years shown, although that does not establish that test scores rose: Cactus Shadows moved from 67th of 270 schools in 2023–24 to 38th of 256 in 2025–26, while its percentile rose from 75th to 85th; its rating remained four stars throughout. The school’s student–teacher ratio was 20.8 in 2024–25, and reported spending was $2,314 per student in 2021–22. These figures provide context, but without other schools in the list they cannot show how the ratio or spending compares with nearby high schools.
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