Summary:
Zip code 85547 has one high school, Payson High School, serving grades 9–12 and enrolling 733 students. Its clearest challenge is English and mathematics: in 2025–26, proficiency was 30% in English Language Arts (ELA) and 23% in math, below state results of 41% and 33%, respectively. The most important finding is that Payson was below the state in both subjects for all grades and for 11th grade.
There is no other high school in the list to rank above or below Payson, but its results show both a consistent academic gap and a subject-area exception. In 11th grade, Payson was 8 percentage points below the state in both ELA (30% versus 38%) and math (23% versus 31%). Science was a relative bright spot: its 11th-grade result was 22%, 3 points above the state’s 19%, though that result is from 2024–25 rather than 2025–26. Completion figures also compare favorably: Payson’s 2024–25 graduation rate was 80.1%, versus 80.0% statewide, and its dropout rate was 4%, compared with 5% statewide, 2 points lower.
SchoolDigger’s ranking history rose overall but declined in the latest year: Payson moved from the 25th percentile in 2023–24 to the 43rd in 2024–25, then to the 36th in 2025–26—an 11-point net increase across the period. Its rank was 203rd of 270 schools, then 155th of 271, and most recently 163rd of 256. The 2024–25 student–teacher ratio was 17.3, but the list does not report a free/reduced-lunch rate. With just one school and no multi-year test-score series, these figures cannot show differences between local schools or whether test scores changed over time.
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