Area schools show improvement in release of letter grades from AR Dept of Education

The Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) has released letter grades for each public school in Arkansas and schools in north central Arkansas did well for the 2024-25 period. For our eight county listening area which includes 22 school districts and 67 schools in Baxter, Boone, Fulton, Izard, Marion, Newton, Searcy and Stone counties, 20 schools saw their grade improve, 46 had their grade stay the same and only one saw their grade drop.

This is the first time the letter grades have been assigned using a curved public school grading system approved by the legislature in August. They are also the first letter grades released using the Arkansas Teaching and Learning Assessment System (ATLAS). No official grades were released last year.

In our area, four schools earned an A grade, 28 schools earned a B, 20 schools were given a C, two schools had a D grade and no schools earned an F. Thirteen schools are listed as “Pending Appeal” in the list from the ADE.

Twenty of the schools saw their grades go up from the last grade received in for the 2022-23 school year. From the schools that received a grade in our area, that is a 37% increase. The only school that saw their grade go down was Rural Special High School in Stone County. Their grade went from an A to a B.

GRADING CRITERIA

According to the ADE, the new grading criteria uses three educational priorities to assign grades: achievement, growth and readiness, the latter which is only applied to high schools.

K-12 schools use:

-The percent of students meeting or exceeding proficiency on state summative exams in English, math and science;

-The percent of students meeting or exceeding individual growth scores in those areas; and

-The percent of students meeting or exceeding their individual growth in the lowest 25% of achievement on the previous state summative exams in those areas.

High schools also rely on the four-year graduation rate.

LOCAL SCHOOL GRADES

In Baxter County, every school except one saw their grade stay the same. The one, Mountain Home Career Academies High School, saw their grade improve from a C to a B.

In Marion County, four schools saw improvement. The biggest was Yellville-Summit’s Elementary School which went from a D to a B grade.

Three schools in Fulton County saw their grades improve in 2024-25 compared to 2022-23.

Izard County had two schools see their grades improve.

There was one school in Stone County which showed improvement.

Searcy County had two schools show an increase in their grades.

Boone County saw four schools with higher grades.

In Newton County, two of the four schools saw improvement.

Here is a complete list of all of the schools in the area with three years worth of grades.

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