Summary:
The Ashdown School District is home to a single high school, Ashdown High School, which serves grades 9 through 12 with a total enrollment of 382 students in a predominantly low-income community where over 68% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Ashdown High School is a school on the rise, showing dramatic improvement in its state ranking from the bottom 25th percentile to the 34th percentile (2-star rating) in just two years. This positive momentum is backed by significant year-over-year test score gains, with English Language Arts proficiency jumping from 17.6% to 29.7% and Algebra proficiency more than doubling from 12.6% to 29.3%. The school notably outperforms the state average in 9th Grade Algebra (29.7% vs. 25.3%), and its graduation rate of 91.4% slightly exceeds the state average of 90.1%. However, the school still trails state averages in most subjects, with Geometry being a critical weakness at only 10.1% proficiency compared to the state's 26.4%.
The school is well-resourced, spending $13,464 per student and maintaining an exceptionally low student-teacher ratio of 7:1, which allows for significant individualized attention. While historical test scores have been below state averages, the recent uptick suggests these investments may finally be translating into better outcomes. Interestingly, 9th graders outperformed 10th graders in both English Language Arts (33.3% vs. 25.6%) and Reading (36.9% vs. 26.9%), indicating that recent improvements may be driven by the incoming class or a more effective 9th-grade curriculum. With a dropout rate of just 0.7%, Ashdown High School demonstrates strong student retention and a promising trajectory for families in the district.
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