Summary:
ZIP code 89149 in Las Vegas contains three high schools — Centennial High School, Northwest Career-Technical Academy High School, and Peterson Academic Center J-Senior High School — all within Clark County School District. Centennial and Northwest serve grades 9–12, while Peterson is a combined junior-senior high serving grades 6–12 with only 113 students. Together the three enroll about 4,886 students. All three report 100% free/reduced lunch, so that figure does not separate them from one another.
Northwest is the clear academic standout, ranking 10 of 105 statewide (90th percentile, 5 stars) and posting 2025–2026 proficiency of 84.3% in ACT English, 47.8% in ACT Math, and 43.3% in EOC Science — well above district and state. Its chronic absenteeism is just 10.8%, less than half the district's 27.0%. Centennial, the largest school at 2,961 students, has a strong 91.9% graduation rate, above district and state, but mixed proficiency: ACT Math at 22.8% is close to district (22.3%) and state (22.6%), while ACT English (46.8%) and EOC Science (17.2%) fall below both. Its absenteeism, 32.1%, is above district and state. Centennial is improving — ACT Math rose from 14% to 22.8% and its rating moved from 1 to 2 stars — but it still sits below the state median.
Peterson looks very different: a 7:1 student-teacher ratio, $29,054 spent per student (about 2.8× Centennial's $10,478), and 67.9% chronic absenteeism. Its current test scores are suppressed by the state, so its academic performance cannot be assessed from this data. Because Peterson serves grades 6–12 and is so small, comparing it directly with the two large 9–12 high schools is risky. In short, Northwest is the top performer, Centennial is a large comprehensive school with a solid graduation rate and improving but still below-average proficiency, and Peterson is a tiny, high-resource school whose current results are unknown.
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