Summary:
The Arkansas Lighthouse Charter Schools district serves three schools in the Jacksonville/Little Rock area, covering grades K-12 with a total enrollment of 426 students, and faces significant challenges with high economic disadvantage rates ranging from 68% to 84% free/reduced lunch eligibility.
The standout story is Jacksonville Lighthouse High School, which has undergone a remarkable turnaround, jumping from the 7th percentile to the 61st percentile in just two years, with Geometry proficiency soaring from 0% to 52.6%—nearly double the state average. In stark contrast, Jacksonville Lighthouse Flightline Academy is the district's weakest link, dropping to the 9th percentile with a critical 8th-grade math proficiency rate of just 6.7%, despite having the best student-teacher ratio at 9.3:1. Jacksonville Lighthouse Elementary remains consistently low-performing, with a math proficiency rate of 15.2% that is nearly 29 points below the state average, suggesting foundational issues that feed into the middle school's struggles.
A key paradox is the extreme spending disparity: the high school spends $39,734 per student (likely driving its improvement with only 60 students), while the middle school spends just $13,538 per student, despite having the worst outcomes. This suggests the middle school's poor performance may stem from a lack of resources rather than class size. The district's graduation rate of 84.6% lags behind the state average, and the high school's English proficiency remains low at 25.9%, indicating that while math interventions are working, literacy challenges persist across all grade levels.
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