Middle Schools in Queen Creek, Arizona: All 15 Middle-Grade Options, Their Real Cities and Their 2024-25 State Letter Grades

1.Every Middle-Grade Option in and Around Queen Creek

Every campus below serves grade 7, grade 8 or both and is in play for a Queen Creek address — including three with “High School” in the name, because Crismon, Eastmark and Benjamin Franklin all start at grade 7. “AZSBE 2024-25” means the letter grade comes from the Arizona State Board of Education A–F file for the 2024-25 school year, the most recent published as of September 2026. Grade spans come from each school’s own site, from the district’s own listing, or from Arizona School Report Cards for the 2024-25 school year, and each row names which.

2.Does Queen Creek Have Good Schools? What the 2024-25 Grades Say

By the state’s A–F letter grades, yes, with a spread. Ten of the fifteen campuses above hold an A for 2024-25, three hold a B and two hold a C. At district level for the same year, Queen Creek Unified and Higley Unified each carry an A, and J.O. Combs Unified carries a B. The letter grade is one accountability product among several the state publishes, so treat it as a starting point rather than the whole answer.

Inside QCUSD the 2024-25 file rates 15 schools: ten A, four B, one C. Newell Barney and Eastmark High are among the ten. Queen Creek Junior High is one of the four Bs, with Crismon High School, Gateway Polytechnic Academy and Jack Barnes Elementary. The single C belongs to Queen Creek Virtual Academy. District enrollment stood at 15,034 students on the state report-card page in September 2026.

The weighting is published. Arizona’s 2024-25 A–F business rules, approved March 24, 2025, weight a traditional K–8 school at 50% growth, 30% proficiency, 10% English learners and 10% acceleration and readiness; a traditional 9–12 school at 30% proficiency, 20% growth, 20% graduation, 20% college and career readiness and 10% English learners. Which of those two models a 7–12 campus is scored under is not stated in the file, so do not read one letter grade as a like-for-like comparison with another. Nothing in the formula measures class size, bell times or the length of the drive. For the bands either side of this one, see the K–6 elementary picture and how the high schools compare.

3.QCUSD Calls Them Junior Highs, and Two of Its High Schools Take Grade 7 Too

Queen Creek Unified runs exactly two dedicated grade 7–8 campuses, and calls both of them junior highs. The label holds across the district’s navigation, its school names and its athletics domains — qcjhsathletics.org for one, nbcpathletics.com for the other. A search for “Queen Creek middle school” therefore returns campuses the district itself does not call middle schools. The district also teaches grades 7 and 8 on two high school campuses, Crismon and Eastmark. The wider structure is in our QCUSD profile.

Queen Creek Junior High School — grades 7–8, letter grade B

Grades 7 and 8 at 20435 S Old Ellsworth Rd, front office 480-987-5940, with a B in the 2024-25 state file — one of four B grades in the district that year. Athletics live on a separate domain, qcjhsathletics.org, rather than on the school site.

Newell Barney College Preparatory School — grades 7–8, letter grade A

At 24937 S Sossaman Rd, front office 480-474-6700. The name reads like a high school and the campus is not one: QCUSD’s own athletics navigation labels it “Newell Barney Junior High Athletics”, and its athletics site is nbcpathletics.com. Grades 7 and 8, and an A in 2024-25, the higher of the two district junior-high grades.

Crismon High School — grades 7–12, letter grade B

Queen Creek Unified’s newest high school, at 21942 E Riggs Rd, established in 2022, serves grades 7 through 12 — the span its own site, QCUSD’s High School Options page and Arizona School Report Cards all give as of September 2026. Its B is the district’s fourth B for 2024-25. The principal’s line is 480-987-6224.

Eastmark High School — grades 7–12, letter grade A, with a Mesa address

A QCUSD campus inside the Eastmark master plan at 9560 E Ray Rd, with an address that reads Mesa, AZ 85212, main office 480-474-6950. Established in 2019, it serves grades 7 through 12 per the district’s High School Options page, the school’s own fast-facts block and the state record. Its homepage welcome paragraph still describes ninth through twelfth graders; the district’s own listing and the state record contradict it. An A for 2024-25.

4.What Happens After Sixth Grade Depends on the Operator

The biggest structural difference here is not curriculum. It is how many times a child changes campus. QCUSD elementary schools run K–6, and where grade 7 goes next depends on which campus the district assigns: a 7–8 junior high means a move after grade 6 and another after grade 8, while Crismon or Eastmark means one move, after grade 6, onto a campus that runs to grade 12. A family at one of the five K–8 charters moves once, after grade 8. A family at American Leadership Academy or Benjamin Franklin also moves once, after grade 6.

Two cells there stay open on purpose. On the QCUSD row, nothing the district publishes says how seventh graders are split between the two junior highs and the two 7–12 high schools, so the number of campus moves depends on an answer only QCUSD can give for your address. Cortina Elementary is a genuine records conflict: the State Board’s 2024-25 file and the school’s own page both read K–6, while the Arizona Department of Education record reads preschool–8, so this page prints the disagreement instead of picking a side. Both are one call away: QCUSD on 480-987-5935, Higley Unified on 480-279-7000.

5.The Charter Options, and How Their Seats Are Filled

Eight charter campuses cover grades 7 and 8 here, and none of them is a standalone middle school: five are K–8, three are 7–12. All are tuition-free public schools, and Legacy Traditional Queen Creek states that on its own site. The broader list, including the K–6 charters that feed these campuses, is in our charter school roundup.

The five K–8 campuses

• Legacy Traditional School – Queen Creek — K–8, A in 2024-25. 41800 N Barnes Pkwy, 480-655-5553. Tuition-free, per the school’s own site.
• Heritage Academy Gateway — K–8, A in 2024-25. 19705 E Germann Rd, 480-461-4400. The state file records a hybrid instructional model for this campus, and the operator’s own tagline also refers to K–12 schools, so confirm the span for this campus rather than for the brand.
• Cambridge Academy East — B in 2024-25. 20365 E Ocotillo Rd. The state accountability file lists a K–8 model; a real-estate aggregator lists K–12, which the state file contradicts. No official website could be verified for this campus and no phone number was captured, so verify both directly before you apply.
• Leading Edge Academy Mountain View — K–8, A in 2024-25. 4815 W Hunt Hwy, 480-655-6787. This is the campus most people mean when they type “Leading Edge Academy Queen Creek”.
• Eduprize School — K–8, A in 2024-25. 4567 W Roberts Rd. Branded “EDUPRIZE Queen Creek”; the mailing address is San Tan Valley, AZ 85144.

The three 7–12 campuses

• American Leadership Academy, Queen Creek — grades 7 and 8 sit inside the 7–12 campus at 23908 S Hawes Rd, 480-987-4500, and the A for 2024-25 is the combined ALA Queen Creek K–12 entity grade. ALA runs an optional paid bus service, the only charter transport verified anywhere in this set; both local campuses are covered in our American Leadership Academy page.
• American Leadership Academy, Ironwood — the same structure at 850 W Combs Rd, 480-344-9898, Queen Creek 85140, and again the 2024-25 A is a combined K–12 entity grade rather than a campus-level one. ALA lists its Ironwood PreK–6 campus at 650 W Combs Rd, a separate building, so confirm the campus address with the school before you plan a drop-off run.
• Benjamin Franklin High School — grades 7–12 at 18864 E Germann Rd, 480-558-1197, A in 2024-25. It has no freestanding middle school: the K–6 Crismon and Power campuses feed straight into it.

Charter seats are not assigned by address. Under A.R.S. § 15-184 a charter must enroll every student who applies on time unless applications exceed capacity, at which point an equitable selection process such as a lottery applies, with sibling preference allowed. The application window, not your street, decides whether a seat exists.

6.Campuses Branded Queen Creek That Sit Somewhere Else

Several of the campuses above carry a name or an address that sends families to the wrong district or the wrong town. Serving Queen Creek families is not the same as sitting in Queen Creek, and a Queen Creek mailing address is not the same as being inside Queen Creek Unified.

The 85140 rows matter beyond pedantry. That ZIP lies entirely in Pinal County, and the Postal Service’s preferred city for it is San Tan Valley, with Queen Creek only an accepted alternate — so the mailing city on a school’s own page settles neither the county nor whether a house near it sits inside Queen Creek town limits. A ZIP code never proves a county, a town boundary, a tax rate or a school district, so verify the address itself. If an address could plausibly sit in either town, the Queen Creek and San Tan Valley comparison sorts out which lines you are crossing.

7.Which High School Comes Next

Feeder patterns are the part of this subject most often stated with false confidence. What is verifiable is which operator runs which high schools. Which specific high school a junior high or an address feeds into is an attendance-boundary question, and no page — this one included — should answer it for your address.

Higley Unified publishes more than most: an interactive boundary map filtered by school type, plus feeder-pathway charts for Higley High School and Williams Field High School, at husd.org/about-husd/school-boundaries. A published pathway is still not an address-level answer, and the district offers no address lookup, so confirm yours with Higley Unified on 480-279-7000. On the QCUSD side, the two campuses families most often weigh against each other are covered in the Queen Creek High and Crismon High comparison.

8.How to Confirm Your Assigned School Before You Sign

Start with QCUSD’s official home-school lookup, the School Site Locator, which the district links from its own enrollment pages. None of the tables above tells you which campus an address is assigned to, and that is not an omission: the only answer that counts is the district’s own. This is the order to do it in.

1. Start from the exact street address on the parcel record, not the listing sheet. A corner lot can sit on the far side of a boundary from the house next door.
2. Run it through the School Site Locator and read what it returns for grades 7 and 8 specifically — on the QCUSD path that can be a junior high or one of the two 7–12 high schools, and no published document settles which.
3. If the address is not a QCUSD one, call the operator: Higley Unified on 480-279-7000, J.O. Combs Unified on 480-987-5300. Ask for the assigned middle-grade campus and the grade span it serves.
4. Ask the same office which high school that campus feeds. The junior-high answer and the high-school answer come off two different boundary maps, and families routinely confirm one and assume the other.
5. For a campus outside your boundary, read QCUSD’s open enrollment page. Confirm the home-boundary school first, file the PDF application, expect seats to depend on capacity, and plan your own transport: the district provides none outside the home boundary.
6. For a charter, apply directly and watch the window. State law obliges the school to take every timely applicant unless it is oversubscribed, at which point a lottery or a similar equitable process decides.
7. Re-run the boundary check before you sign, and again before enrollment day if months have passed. Boundaries are the district’s to redraw, and the answer you got in the spring is not a guarantee for the fall.

The mechanics of that check, including what to do when a parcel sits close to a line, are in our guide to verifying any Queen Creek address. If you are still choosing between areas rather than between addresses, the neighborhood comparisons and the 30-day relocation checklist cover the sequencing — enrollment windows do not wait for a closing date.