Arrowhead Park Early College High School

Arrowhead Park Early College High School is a grades 9–12 school serving 549 students in Las Cruces, New Mexico, as part of Las Cruces Public Schools. It is the smallest of the district's high schools — roughly a third the size of the area's large comprehensive high schools — yet it is one of the top-performing high schools in the state, earning five stars and ranking at the 90th percentile while its own district sits at the 44th percentile with two stars.

That performance has been remarkably consistent. In every year the state reported a ranking, the school earned five stars and placed at or above the 90th percentile — ten data points spanning more than a decade, with a best year at the 98th percentile. On 2025–2026 11th-grade state tests, 73.17% of students were proficient in language arts, 41.46% in math, and 62.18% in science — roughly double the district and state in language arts, and about 3.5 times the district and 3.3 times the state in math. Graduation rates have stayed in a 93–97% band while the district and state sit around 76–82%.

Compared with nearby schools, the gaps are wide. Centennial High School, the district's next-best high school, trails by about 32 points in language arts and 23 points in math, and ranks 31 percentile points lower. Mayfield High reports 21.49% science proficiency against Arrowhead's 62.18%. Notably, this is not an affluence story: Arrowhead's free/reduced-price lunch rate is essentially 100%, just like every neighboring high school, so family income does not explain the difference. One internal gap worth watching is gender — male students have ranked well above female students in each year with subgroup data. Also note that school-level graduation rates for 2020–21 through 2022–23 are not reported, and many comparison schools have state-suppressed test scores.