Artesia Park Junior High

Artesia Park Junior High is a grades 8–9 school serving 539 students at 15th and Cannon in Artesia, New Mexico, part of Artesia Public Schools — and because there are no other schools within 20 miles, the most useful comparisons available are its own district and the state as a whole.

On 8th-grade tests in 2025–26, Artesia Park Junior High performed essentially at its district's level: within about half a point in language arts (43.95%), math (25.81%) and science (38.55%). Its edge shows up against the state, where math proficiency is about 27% higher than New Mexico's rate and science about 13% higher; in language arts it merely matches the state. The school's math-to-ELA gap is also roughly five points tighter than the state's, mainly because its math floor is higher.

A different picture emerges from the 2024–25 all-grades results, which cover both 8th and 9th grades: 42.51% in ELA and 20.65% in math — roughly 9 and 16.6 points below the district, and below the state in both. Since the school has only two grades, this points to 9th grade as the likely weak spot, though no separate 9th-grade figure is available. The school was above the state in all three subjects in 2022–23, and math has not fully recovered to that level. The clearer positives: the student-teacher ratio improved from 15.9 to 13.0 in two years, and the district's graduation rate has risen to 84.1%, above the 80.6% state rate. One caution: the 100% free/reduced-lunch figure in 2024–25 reflects universal free meals, not a sudden demographic change.