Tempe Preparatory Academy

Tempe Preparatory Academy
Location
Tempe, Arizona
USA
Coordinates 33°23′33″N 111°55′07″W / 33.392611°N 111.918514°WCoordinates: 33°23′33″N 111°55′07″W / 33.392611°N 111.918514°W
Information
Type Public (charter) secondary
Motto Verum, pulchrum, bonum
"Truth, beauty, goodness"
Established 1996
Grades 6–12
Enrollment High school: 250 students (October 2012)[1]
Mascot Knights
Accreditation North Central Association, American Academy for Liberal Education
Website tempeprep.org

Tempe Preparatory Academy is a charter school in Tempe, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona in the United States. Founded in 1996, Tempe Preparatory Academy (also known as Tempe Prep or TPA) offers a Great Books curriculum centered on Western culture, history, language, and literature. Its motto is Verum, Pulchrum, Bonum, meaning Truth, Beauty, Goodness. It is also the founding model for the Great Hearts Academies schools, with which it is otherwise unaffiliated. Tempe Prep is an independently governed charter school, and is currently headmastered by David Baum. Other headmasters: Dr. Thomas Butler, Mr. Andrew Zwernaman, Dr. Daniel Scoggin, Mr. Ron Bergez, Ms. Julie Boles and Hugh Hallman.

School philosophy

As a charter school Tempe Prep offers a Great Books education centering around fundamental texts in the Western pantheon. Tempe Prep's philosophy includes small class size (no classroom has more than 22 students) and education using the Socratic method.

Admission

As a public school in the state of Arizona, Tempe Preparatory Academy has no entrance requirements. Interested families must apply for the school's annual admissions lottery, which takes place in the spring of each school year. However, if a family has one child enrolled, any other children automatically receive a spot in accordance with Arizona's charter school law.

As a charter school, Tempe Prep has the right to cap its enrollment, and does so at 360 students with no more than 20 students per section. However, starting in the 2008-2009 school year, Tempe Preparatory Academy will cap each class at 22 students, allowing two more students into each class. Another addition in the 2008-2009 school year is one class of sixth grade.

Awards

In 2008, the school was awarded the Blue Ribbon Award.[2]

Tempe Prep earned ratings of "excelling" from the state of Arizona in 2008 and 2010.[3][4]

Academics

Tempe Preparatory Academy offers few choices in its academic curriculum. 9-12th grade students may choose to study Latin/Greek, French, Spanish, or German. The rest of the curriculum is fixed.

Tempe Preparatory Academy added a 6th grade in 2008.

Senior thesis and defense

Senior students at Tempe Preparatory Academy must complete a written thesis and defense before receiving a diploma from the school. Students are required to write a fifteen to twenty page thesis based upon three to four texts, one of which must be a TPA curriculum text. They are advised by a faculty member and must defend their thesis orally before a defense committee.

Student life

Activities

Tempe Prep offers many extracurriculars in fine arts and academics. Although Tempe Prep is a small school, the Speech and Debate team and Odyssey of the Mind teams are competitive, regularly placing in the top 5 at tournaments with many schools over 10 times the size. Tempe Prep has won the Arizona 1A-2A-3A State Champion in Speech and Debate every year from 2006, through 2012. The Odyssey of the Mind teams won the State Championship between 2002 until 2007 with a World Final Placement of 5th place in 2004, 4th place in 2007, 2nd place in 2008, and 5th place in the 2009 World Finals Competition.

The school also offers numerous musical groups, such as string ensemble, wind orchestra, percussion ensemble, and Cantamus, a choral ensemble, which sang at Carnegie Hall in the summer of 2007.

Athletics

In high school athletics, Tempe Prep competes in the AIA (Arizona Interscholastic Association) and is a member of its Div 4 Conference. Among the school's strengths are track and field, where the women's team has won six state titles including five straight from 2005 to 2009, runner-up 2012, 2013, 2014[6] and the men's team has won three of its own.[7] In women's soccer, the school won the state 1A-2A-3A winter championship in 2008;[8] they also claimed the Women's Division IV basketball championship in 2012 and were runners-up in 2013, losing the title by 2 points in the last 14 seconds of the game.[9] In total, Tempe Prep high school sports teams have won a total of 11 state championships.[10] Junior high athletics compete in the Valley Christian Schools League.

Tempe Preparatory Academy offers the following athletic teams:

Senior trip

The week after spring break, senior students join faculty members on a trip to Washington D.C. The trip regularly lasts several days and sometimes includes visits to Philadelphia and historic sites in Virginia.

Demographics

Currently Tempe Preparatory Academy's demographic cross section consists of 83.4% white, 1.5% black, 7.1% Hispanic, and approximately 8.0% miscellaneous race.

References