Guy Perkins School District

The Guy Perkins School District is a small, rural district in Arkansas serving 402 students across two schools: Guy-Perkins Elementary School (grades PK-6) and Guy-Perkins High School (grades 7-12), with an extremely high rate of economic disadvantage as over 91% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch.

Guy-Perkins Elementary School is the district's academic bright spot, showing clear improvement and outperforming the high school in nearly every subject. Its state ranking has trended upward, and in the most recent year, 4th, 5th, and 6th graders exceeded state averages in English Language Arts and Reading. For example, 5th graders scored 53% proficient in ELA versus the state's 40.9%. In contrast, Guy-Perkins High School has experienced a dramatic decline, dropping from the 62nd percentile to the 20th percentile in just two years. The high school's most critical issue is a mathematics crisis, with only 6.1% of all students proficient in math compared to the state average of 44.1%, and 0% of 7th graders proficient. However, a positive outlier exists in Algebra, where 43.4% of students are proficient, exceeding the state average.

Despite high per-pupil spending of over $17,000 and a favorable student-teacher ratio of 10.1:1 at the high school, academic outcomes are poor, raising questions about resource allocation. The district's graduation rate is 85.0%, below the state average, though the dropout rate is very low at 0.6%. The data reveals a clear "elementary success, high school struggle" paradox, where strong foundational skills built in elementary school are not sustained into high school, suggesting a potential issue with the transition or instructional quality between the two buildings. The dramatic swing in high school math scores from 43.6% proficiency to 6.1% in one year is a major red flag that warrants immediate investigation.