By Clara Moffitt

To two long-time faculty members, Mrs. Nancy Calahan and her son Mr. Nate Calahan, Newsweek’s ranking of Tempe Prep as Arizona’s No. 1 high school is no surprise. Both say TPA has remained steadfastly true to its original mission when it opened its doors 20 years ago.

Newsweek magazine uses SAT and ACT scores, student-to-faculty ratio, graduation rate, and college enrollment rate, to determine the rankings of the nation’s high schools.

Mrs. Calahan has been at our school since it opened in 1996. She began as a parent volunteer, starting the hot lunch program and the Parent Advisory Council until she was asked to work in the Athletic Office. Then, one thing led to another, and now she teaches English full-time.

“When the school first started, it was definitely unique in the sense that it gave students a different option,” says Mrs. Calahan. Since then, there have been many schools established that are similar to TPA, “but we have stayed true to [our] mission; we value a small class size, and we are still rigorous. We have teachers dedicated to their profession and they know what’s important,” she says.

Mrs. Calahan explains that Tempe Prep has enhanced the use of technology in our curriculum and brought more attention to how our students, with our outstanding liberal arts curriculum, can take advantage of great college and scholarship opportunities with the help of our College Counselor.

Mr. Calahan has also been at TPA for a very long time. He first attended the school in its second year, 1997. Mr. Calahan has seen Tempe Prep grow in terms of size. It used to be much smaller and was at a different location. In its first year, it was also limited to grades 7- 9. Now, of course, we have not only expanded our high school, but also our middle school by adding 6th grade. Mr. Calahan believes that Tempe Prep distinguishes itself from other schools by teaching how the idea of “the human experience isn’t just able to be described in a factual way but also an artistic way” and that, “the only way to understand truth is to understand it from a variety of perspectives.”

One of the criteria in Newsweek’s ranking methodology is students’ “college readiness” as determined by their ACT and SAT scores. According to TPA’s College Counselor, Mrs. Moffitt, “Tempe Prep students score well above the national average on these college admissions tests. Our students are phenomenal. When they put a genuine effort and sense of wonder into their learning and studying, that shows on their excellent standardized test scores.”

Another factor that Newsweek takes into consideration is the number of students who graduate. Mrs. Calahan recognizes that students stay at Tempe Prep because they know that their teachers care for them. “We want to help students who are struggling. We don’t want them to fall through the cracks or feel like they are lost in the masses; we want to see them succeed,” says Mrs. Calahan. She believes that when students feel this, they really do want to stay at the school.

What do the rankings mean to our teachers? Mr. Calahan hopes to continue to work to make “TPA better than it has ever been. Rankings are a wonderful way to communicate that there are things we do well as a school, but I never want people to look at Tempe Prep as something that is fully formed. We cannot think of Tempe Prep as being ‘perfect.’ We must ask ourselves, ‘What are we doing, what are we doing well, and what could we be doing better?'”

Tempe Prep’s Headmaster, Dr. Porter, is pleased to see that we are being recognized for our excellent work in preparing our students for college and for life. He says, “We work very hard to help our students think about and analyze their thoughts about what they are learning… The liberal arts education we offer does not emphasize one subject as being more important than another. To be well educated in the tradition of the West, a student needs to be immersed in all of the subject areas we teach and asked to think deeply about them.”

Overall, Tempe Prep’s faculty is extremely proud of this small school that has managed to stay strong for 20 years and rank 1st in the state and 15th in the nation. Mrs. Calahan sums it up: “I think the ranking just confirms that we are the mother ship, and we’re doing it right.

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