Scale What’s Working in Arizona Schools: Lessons from PVSchools
Picture, PictureWhile Arizona's educational outcomes remain below statewide goals, Paradise Valley USD (PVSchools)—a long-time partner of Center for the Future of Arizona’s (CFA) Beat The Odds School Leadership Academy—is a positive outlier. That’s why CFA partnered with the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) to produce a new case study on PVSchools in Phoenix.
PVSchools has partnered with CFA to provide educational leadership training and support to its principals and district leaders since 2017 and is a positive outlier when it comes to student achievement outcomes. As one of Arizona’s most demographically representative districts, it offers insights that are relevant and potentially scalable to school districts across the state. With more than 27,000 students across 45 schools, PVSchools is showing measurable progress in academic recovery, teacher retention, and student-centered innovation.
This new research offers a window into how school systems can produce strong results when leadership, relationships, and local flexibility are intentionally supported. The case study highlights the role of school leadership as a central system function, showing how strong internal pipelines, professional trust, and distributed leadership fuel lasting improvement.
This research is part of CFA’s broader commitment to advancing quality education for every Arizona child. Through the Arizona Education Progress Meter, we track statewide goals for student outcomes, and to reach those goals, we must investigate real-world practices that work. PVSchools gives us a powerful example to inform future action that can be adapted and scaled in other Arizona communities.