Crossett School District

The Crossett School District in Arkansas is a small, unified district of three schools serving 1,620 students from Pre-K through 12th grade, and it is a district on the rise, showing remarkable year-over-year improvement across all campuses.

The standout performer is Crossett High School, the only school to earn a 2-star rating, with a graduation rate of 90.7% and impressive strengths in STEM—its 10th-grade Geometry proficiency (33.3%) doubles the state average, and its Biology scores also exceed state norms. In contrast, Crossett Middle School is the area of greatest concern, consistently ranking in the bottom 22% of Arkansas middle schools and posting the district's lowest test scores, with a particularly acute "7th grade slump" where proficiency rates in Math and English Language Arts (ELA) are just 15.6%. Meanwhile, Crossett Elementary School serves as the foundation for improvement, showing the most dramatic single-year gains—ELA proficiency jumped from 19% to 33.3% and Math from 27.9% to 40%—despite having the highest rate of economically disadvantaged students (68.38%).

Key metrics reveal a district spending an average of $12,181 per student, with the elementary school receiving the most ($12,996) and the middle school the least ($11,515), an inverse relationship to performance that warrants attention. The district-wide student-teacher ratio is 15.9:1, and over 60% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch, a significant socioeconomic headwind. The most compelling takeaway is the district's rapid, unified improvement: every school boosted its state ranking and test scores from 2024-2025 to 2025-2026, suggesting recent initiatives are having a powerful positive impact, even as the middle school requires targeted intervention to address its specific challenges.