Summary:
The Mulberry Pleasant View Bi County School District is a small, rural district in Arkansas serving 442 students across three schools: Marvin Primary School (elementary, K-4), Pleasant View Campus School (middle, 5-8), and Mulberry High School (9-12). Every student in the district qualifies for free or reduced lunch, highlighting significant economic challenges, and the district ranks in the bottom 12% of Arkansas schools with a 1-star rating.
Among the three schools, Marvin Primary School stands out as the relative bright spot, consistently outperforming the district average in all core subjects and showing a positive trend in its state ranking over the last three years. In contrast, Mulberry High School experienced the most significant decline, dropping from a 3-star school (54th percentile) to a 1-star school (11th percentile) in just two years, with alarmingly low math proficiency—only 2.6% of students are proficient in Geometry. Pleasant View Campus School has been the most consistently low-performing school, remaining in the bottom quarter of the state for three consecutive years, with a sharp decline in performance between 5th and 8th grade.
A key paradox is that the district spends significantly more per student than the state average, yet achieves below-average results. The highest-spending school, Mulberry High School ($17,088 per student), has the lowest test scores, while the lowest-spending school, Pleasant View Campus School ($14,147 per student), has the second-best scores. Additionally, Mulberry High School has an exceptionally low student-teacher ratio of 5.7:1, yet it is the worst-performing school, suggesting that profound learning gaps from earlier grades overwhelm even favorable classroom conditions. Math is the district's critical weakness across all schools, and a glimmer of hope exists at Pleasant View Campus School, where 7th graders consistently outperform their peers in every subject, offering a potential model for improvement.
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