- Mountain View High School won the state Academic Decathlon. Skyline won the most improved trophy. Among Arizona’s top ten teams are Skyline, fourth, Red Mountain, fifth, Dobson, sixth, and Westwood seventh.
- Mesa teens earned 86 choral, 22 orchestra, 18 band and four harp positions at the All-State Festival.
- Money Magazine calls MPS a superb educational value. Money ranked Mesa among the top 100 districts based on academic and affordable cost of living.
- Over the last 23 years (1983-84 to 2007-2008) Mesa sports teams have won 148 state championships.
- MPS seniors were offered scholarships with a total value of over $43 million in 2006-2007.
- In 2006, residents contributed $2.5 million to MPS for extracurricular activities. Donors earned state income tax credits in return.
- MPS has enrolled approximately 74,000 students in 2007-08, just under ten percent of the students in Arizona.
- On a recent survey of approximately 3,000 MPS seniors, 81 percent of the class of 2006 reported that they plan to attend some form of higher education (e.g., two-year college, four-year college, or trade/technical school) during the 2006-2007 academic year. Of those, nearly two-thirds (64 percent) indicated that they will be attending college full-time.
- Mesa elementary schools have won the Maricopa County Math Challenge five times from 2002 through 2007.
- The Arizona School Public Relations Association presented Awards of Excellence to the MPS Planning and Boundary Design Advisory Committee, Mesa Educator Career Pathway Program and Educational Television Department. Service Learning, Mesa Youth Summit, Project Diversity and Adapted Physical Education won Awards of Merit.
- Mesa Public Schools
ethnic breakdown for 2007-2008 was as follows:
| White |
51.5 percent |
| Hispanic |
37.7 percent |
| Native American |
4.1 percent |
| Black |
4.3 percent |
| Asian |
2.4 percent |
- Franklin Northeast is a Blue Ribbon School. The official title? United States 2007 No Child Left Behind – Blue Ribbon School.
- Eighteen students were named National Merit Scholarship Finalists in 2006-2007 competition. Six National Hispanic Scholars and four National Achievement Finalists were also named.
- MPS employed 4,535 teachers in 2007-2008. Teachers can receive incentive pay for achieving class and school wide student achievement goals. All employees can receive incentive pay for achieving parent satisfaction goals.
- The MPS four-year graduation rate was 80.9 percent in 2006-2007. This rate is calculated by tracking students over a four-year period grade 9 through grade 12.
- Four Mesa teens are 2007 Flinn Scholars. Flinn scholars receive full tuition, room and board, books and supplies, and miscellaneous and personal expenses for four years of undergraduate studies at ASU, U of A, or NAU; research projects and professional meetings with faculty mentors, travel abroad, and special cultural and intellectual activities and events; and meetings with state and national leaders in business, education, government, and the arts.
- On the Scholastic
Aptitude Tests (SAT), Mesa Public Schools class of 2007 outperformed
the previous class, as well as the state and nation as follows:
| |
Critical Reading |
Math |
Writing |
| MPS |
526 |
554 |
506 |
| Arizona |
519 |
525 |
502 |
| Nation |
502 |
515 |
494 |
- On the American
College Test (ACT), Mesa Public Schools class of 2007 again outperformed
the previous class, as well as the state and nation as follows:
| |
Composite |
| MPS |
23.6 |
| Arizona |
21.8 |
| Nation |
21.2 |
- The MPS dropout rate for grades 9-12, utilizing the state-mandated formula, was 3.66 percent in 2006-2007. The overall district dropout rate for grades 7-12 was 2.99 percent.
The MPS dropout
rate for grades 9-12, utilizing the state-mandated formula,
was 3.81 percent in 2005-2006. The overall district dropout rate for
grades 7-12 was
3.24 percent.
- On the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS), MPS scores in reading and math continue to top state averages at all grade levels in the percent passing. In reading, at the third grade, for example, three Mesa schools ranked in the top five among East Valley districts and at grade six, Mesa schools hold the top two ranks, and six of the top ten ranks, among all East Valley schools.
- Education Week magazine names Mesa Public Schools the No. 8 district for graduation rates among the nation's 60 largest districts.
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