Fouke School District

The Fouke School District in Arkansas is a small, unified district serving 1,107 students across three schools: Fouke Elementary School (PK-5), Paulette Smith Middle School (6-8), and Fouke High School (9-12). The district is ranked 161st out of 251 districts in Arkansas, earning a 2-star rating, and faces a significant challenge with high rates of economic disadvantage, with free/reduced lunch percentages ranging from 54.73% at the high school to 68.09% at the elementary school.

Fouke High School stands out for its unique resource allocation and performance profile. It has an exceptionally low student-to-teacher ratio of 5.7:1 and the highest per-student spending at $13,620, far exceeding the middle school's $9,850. While the high school outperformed the state in 10th-grade English Language Arts, Reading, and Biology in the 2025-2026 school year, it struggles with a catastrophic 5.1% proficiency rate in Algebra, compared to the state average of 36.9%. Its graduation rate of 87.5% is below the state average of 90.1%. In contrast, Paulette Smith Middle School is a bright spot in math, with 6th and 7th graders exceeding state averages in Mathematics, but it underperforms in Reading across all grade levels. Fouke Elementary School, the largest school with 514 students, has the highest economic disadvantage rate and a student-to-teacher ratio of 15.8:1.

A key takeaway is the district-wide decline in performance rankings from the 2023-2024 school year to the 2025-2026 school year, with the high school dropping from the 70th to the 39th percentile and the middle school from the 62nd to the 38th. The "Algebra gap" is a critical weakness, with proficiency rates plummeting from 68.2% to 25% at the middle school and remaining at just 5.1% at the high school. This suggests a systemic issue that begins in middle school and worsens, potentially linked to the high poverty levels and uneven resource allocation across the district.