PHOTO: Arkansas Education Secretary Jacob Oliva (center) discusses assessment scores at the July 10, 2025 state education board meeting as members Randy Henderson and Adrienne Woods listen. | Photo by Antoinette Grajeda/Arkansas Advocate
By ANTOINETTE GRAJEDA | Arkansas Advocate
The Arkansas Department of Education released district level rankings for the first time as part of a redesigned school report card website that launched Thursday.
The updated website and A-F rankings are aimed at making it easier for families to better understand how their districts and schools are performing, according to an ADE press release.
“They also allow school leaders, district administrators, researchers, and policymakers to dig deeper into the data and identify where improvement is needed so we can direct resources and support to the students that need it most,” Hope Worsham, ADE’s assistant commissioner for Public School Accountability, said in the release.
Education officials developed district rankings as a result of the Arkansas ACCESS Act, a wide-ranging 2025 education law that, among other things, directed the education department to develop a new formula for determining a letter grade ranking for public school districts and education service cooperatives.
Under the new formula, each district receives an overall score out of 900 based on achievement, growth and readiness, which is then converted to a letter grade, according to ADE. A district’s letter grade cannot be higher than the highest-performing school or lower than the lowest-performing school in that district.
The education department released ratings for individual schools under a revised formula in September. On Thursday, ADE announced it was awarding $7 million to 151 schools that “displayed exceptional performance in student achievement and growth” through the Arkansas School Recognition Program.
The formula used to calculate rankings for individual high schools was applied to school districts. Using that formula, education officials reported that 23 districts received an “A,” 98 received a “B,” 98 received a “C,” 24 received a “D” and 11 received an “F.”
Education Secretary Jacob Olivia told reporters on a virtual call Thursday morning that having both district- and school-level rankings is useful because, while a district might be performing well overall, there may be one school within that district that’s struggling and needs more help.
Oliva mentioned a North Little Rock school that’s had an “F”-ranking for a dozen years as an example of a school where change is needed.
“It’s time for us to start having conversations about how we’re going to close that school and make sure those kids are afforded the high-quality teachers and a high-quality learning environment,” he said. “We have failed a generation of kids by letting districts hide behind individual school grades, so that’s no longer acceptable.”
Debates over school accountability have extended to private schools and home schools in recent years with the creation of the Educational Freedom Account program, a school voucher program that allows state funds to be used for allowable education expenses, such as private school tuition.
Students in the EFA program are required to take an annual assessment, but it doesn’t have to be the same statewide test administered to public school students, the ATLAS exam. The Arkansas Teaching, Learning & Assessment System (ATLAS), which was developed by state education officials, replaced the discontinued ACT Aspire and was first administered to students in spring 2024.
Because private and homeschool students receiving EFA funds may not take the ATLAS exam, it’s difficult to make an even comparison between students. However, ADE officials said Thursday they’re working on that.
About 2,000 homeschool students are expected to take the ATLAS exam in the spring, Worsham said. Additionally, ADE is working with the University of Arkansas’ Office for Education Policy to conduct a study that would convert scores from a handful of the more popular assessments to what those scores would be on the ATLAS exam. Worsham said they expect to work on that process during the summer.
District and school report cards are available at myschoolinfo.arkansas.gov.