Summary:
The Gosnell School District in Gosnell, Arkansas, serves 1,215 students across two schools: Gosnell Elementary School (Grades K-6) and Gosnell High School (Grades 7-12), with a high percentage of students (73-80%) receiving free or reduced lunch.
Gosnell Elementary School is the district's academic standout, particularly in Mathematics, where its overall proficiency rate of 51% exceeds the state average of 44.1%. This strength is most evident in 6th grade, where 71.2% of students are proficient in Math—26.1 percentage points above the state average. However, the school's state ranking has declined over the past three years, dropping from the 75th percentile to the 47th. In contrast, Gosnell High School faces significant challenges, especially in advanced math and science. While its 8th-grade Algebra program is highly effective (88.9% proficiency vs. 73.9% state), performance plummets in later years, with Geometry proficiency at just 9.1% and Biology at 27.1%. The high school also has a lower student-to-teacher ratio (10.4:1) than the elementary school (15.1:1) and spends slightly less per student ($11,732 vs. $12,181), yet its academic performance consistently trails both the elementary school and state averages.
Key metrics reveal a district with notable disparities. The elementary school outperforms the high school in English Language Arts (37.4% vs. 35.3%), Reading (35.7% vs. 36.4%), Mathematics (51.0% vs. 40.8%), and Science (40.6% vs. 36.2%), though both schools generally fall below state averages. The high school's graduation rate is 86.6%, below the state average of 90.1%, with a dropout rate of 1.2%. A critical finding is the "middle school cliff" in science, where proficiency drops sharply after 6th grade, and a breakdown in math instruction between 8th and 10th grade, despite strong early foundations. The district ranks 147th out of 251 in Arkansas (41st percentile, 2-star rating), highlighting the need for targeted interventions to sustain elementary successes and address high school challenges.
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