Summary:
The Gosnell School District in Arkansas contains a single high school, Gosnell High School, serving grades 7 through 12 with 567 students in an area where 73.19% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, indicating a high level of economic disadvantage.
Gosnell High School is ranked 147th out of 251 districts in Arkansas, placing it in the 41st percentile with a 2-star rating, and its state ranking has shown a slight downward trend over the last three years. The school's graduation rate of 86.6% is below the state average of 90.1%, and its dropout rate is 1.2%. The school benefits from a low student-to-teacher ratio of 10.4:1 and spends $11,732 per student, which typically allows for more individualized attention. However, the school's overall test scores are below state averages in most subjects, including English Language Arts (35.3% vs. 39.4%), Reading (36.4% vs. 40.4%), Mathematics (40.8% vs. 44.1%), and Science (36.2% vs. 44.0%).
The most striking finding is the extreme disparity in math performance by grade level. Eighth-grade students taking the ATLAS Mathematics test scored 47% proficient, outperforming the state average of 36.2%, and 88.9% of 8th graders taking Algebra were proficient, far exceeding the state average of 73.9%. This success does not carry over to high school, where only 15.5% of 9th graders were proficient in Algebra and a mere 4.1% of 10th graders were proficient in Geometry, compared to state averages of 36.9% and 26.4%, respectively. Geometry (9.1% proficient) and Biology (27.1% proficient) are critical weaknesses, with performance gaps of 15-17 percentage points below state averages. On a positive note, the school showed year-over-year improvement in English Language Arts (from 30.9% to 35.3%) and Reading (from 34.7% to 36.4%), suggesting recent instructional changes may be taking effect.
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