Summary:
The Forrest City School District serves approximately 2,078 students across five schools in a high-poverty, urban area of Arkansas, where 100% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch and the district ranks in the bottom 6% of the state.
Within the district, Forrest City Junior High School stands out as the academic bright spot, being the only school where students consistently score above the district average and even outperform the state in Algebra—with 41.7% proficiency compared to the state's 36.9%. In contrast, Forrest City High School faces a math crisis, with only 6.5% proficiency in Algebra and a mere 1% in 10th-grade Geometry. Lincoln Academy, which isolates 6th graders, has the lowest per-student spending at $7,149 and shows a slight academic dip compared to 5th graders at Stewart Elementary School. Central Elementary School serves grades PK-2 and has no standardized test scores, but it has the highest student-to-teacher ratio in the district at 28.5:1.
Key takeaways include a "leaky pipeline" where strong math performance at the Junior High fails to carry over to the High School, and an inverse relationship between spending and performance—the Junior High spends the most ($16,207 per student) and performs best, while Lincoln Academy spends the least and struggles. The district's graduation rate is 80.5%, nearly 10 points below the state average, and the high school dropout rate is 3.7%. For parents, the Junior High offers a promising math program, but the High School requires urgent intervention in mathematics, and the isolated 6th-grade structure at Lincoln Academy may not provide an academic advantage.
Thank you for your feedback!