Summary:
Brookland High School is the sole high school in the Brookland School District, serving grades 10 through 12 with 645 students in a community where about 25% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, indicating a relatively low level of economic disadvantage compared to state averages.
The school has experienced a dramatic academic turnaround. In the 2024-2025 school year, it ranked in the bottom 15% of Arkansas high schools with a 1-star rating and very low test scores—only 1.5% proficiency in Geometry and 15.2% in Biology. Just one year later, it jumped to the top 24% with a 4-star rating, showing massive gains across all subjects. English Language Arts proficiency soared from 24.4% to 45.1%, and Biology proficiency reached 48%, outperforming the state average of 42.7%. However, Geometry remains a significant weakness, with only 15.5% of students proficient compared to the state average of 26.4%. The school also maintains a high graduation rate of 94.8% and a low dropout rate of 1.2%.
A key concern is the gap between the high school and the district's overall performance. The district's Biology proficiency is 62.5%, while the high school's is 48%, suggesting that student performance drops upon entering high school. This, combined with the historical contrast between high graduation rates and very low test scores, points to potential issues with curriculum alignment or grading practices. With a student-teacher ratio of 17.1 and per-student spending of $12,583, the school has reasonable resources, making the recent improvement particularly noteworthy for parents evaluating the school's trajectory.
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