Hoxie School District

The Hoxie School District in Arkansas is a small, two-school district serving 860 students from Pre-K through 12th grade, where every single student is eligible for free or reduced lunch, highlighting significant economic challenges across the community.

Hoxie High School stands out as the district's relative strength, showing a clear upward trend by improving from a 1-star to a 2-star rating over three years. It excels in Biology and 10th-grade English Language Arts, where proficiency rates actually surpass state averages, and benefits from an exceptionally low student-teacher ratio of 5:1. However, the high school struggles profoundly in advanced math, with Algebra and Geometry proficiency rates far below state averages. In contrast, Hoxie Elementary School faces steeper challenges, with overall performance below state averages, particularly in 5th and 6th grade where proficiency drops sharply. A bright spot is the elementary school's strong science performance in 3rd and 4th grade, which exceeds state averages. The district spends more per student at the high school ($13,600) than the elementary school ($11,444), and the high school's graduation rate is 85.9%, below the state average, though its dropout rate is exceptionally low at 0.5%.

The most critical finding is a sharp decline in performance as students transition from elementary to upper grades, suggesting a "middle school gap" that causes significant learning loss. While the high school's consistent improvement and low dropout rate indicate a supportive environment that retains students, the elementary school's higher student-teacher ratio (18.1:1) and lower spending mean it faces an even steeper uphill battle. The district's overall ranking of 164th out of 251 in Arkansas places it in the 35th percentile, but the high school's positive trajectory offers hope for replicating that momentum at the elementary level, especially in the critical 5th and 6th-grade years.