Chandler elementary tops in state, per national report

By Jason W. Brooks
Mail | X: @JasonWBrooks2

​Chandler Unified School District has 29 of its district schools placed among the best elementary and middle schools in Arizona in the U.S. News & World Report 2025 Best Elementary and Middle School Rankings.

Weinberg Gifted Academy led the way, earning the top ranking among the 22 CUSD elementaries on the list, but Weinberg also was named the No. 1 elementary school in Arizona with a perfect 100/100 score.
Chandler Traditional Academy-Independence was right behind Weinberg at No. 2 among Arizona elementaries.

Those two are followed by CTA-Freedom at No. 37. Others in the top 100 are CTA-Goodman (No. 39), CTA-Liberty (69), Jacobson Elementary (73), Patterson (78), Ryan (80), Santan (83) and Carlson (92).

Also ranked among Arizona elementaries are CUSD’s Rice (128), Haley (146), Tarwater (193), Riggs (207), Basha Elementary (220), CTA-Humphrey (235), Hartford Sylvia Encinas (319), Andersen (320), Fulton (327), Auxier Elementary School (349), Navarrete (404), Hull (410), Chandler Online Academy (459) and Conley (653).

Arizona College Prep Middle School and Basha Middle School are CUSD’s standouts in their category. They rank No. 2 and No. 3, respectively, in Arizona, with Mesa Academy for Advanced Studies claiming No. 1.
Bogle Junior High School is ranked 132nd among 132 Arizona middle schools Chandler Online Academy is 145th, followed by Casteel Junior High (180th), Santan Junior High (183rd), Payne Junior High (217th), Andersen Junior High (294th) and Willis Junior High (267th).

U.S. News & World Report creates these rankings each year, assessing individual schools largely on the number of students who were proficient or above proficient in their math, reading and language arts state assessments.

“Half of the formula assessed the scores themselves and the other half incorporated the test results in the context of socioeconomic demographics,” according to the U.S. News & World Report website.

U.S. News’ directory of K-12 schools consists of 119,272 schools, which includes 96,982 public schools and 22,290 private schools.

In the 2025 rankings of public schools, 83% or 65,759 schools were ranked in the elementary or middle school rankings. For this year’s report, 47,573 elementary and 23,861 middle schools were ranked.

Unranked schools were public schools that either had less than 20 students, served specific subgroups, enrolled in the federal government data set, had less than 30 test takers in reading, language arts and math or had unobtainable, usable state assessment data.

In U.S. News & World Report’s 2024 high school rankings, released in the spring, Arizona College Prep High School was the highest-ranked CUSD school, grabbing the No. 13 spot among all Arizona high schools on the list and No. 243 nationally on the list of more than 13,000 ranked.
To find out if a specific school ranks on the list, click on this link.

We invite our readers to submit their civil comments on this topic.  Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.

Email Jason W. Brooks at jbrooks@iniusa.org.

Jason W. Brooks
News Editor | Chandler Independent

Jason W. Brooks joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in July 2021 as an associate editor. After a year covering Buckeye, he has covered Chandler since the fall of 2022, in addition to assisting the Daily Independent throughout his time at INI.

Education: University of New Mexico, bachelor of arts in journalism and mass communication, print emphasis, English minor.

Random Fact: He and his siblings witnessed a Space Shuttle launch and landing in the same year in person, on opposite coasts.

Hobbies: Karaoke, bicycling and American Sign Language.

Community: He supports animal shelters.