Central Elementary School

Central Elementary School in Magnolia, AR, serves 527 students in grades 3 through 7 and is part of the Magnolia School District, which is ranked in the bottom 18th percentile of Arkansas school districts.

Central Elementary faces significant challenges, with nearly all students (99.24%) qualifying for free or reduced lunch in the 2024-2025 school year—a dramatic increase from 67.29% just two years earlier. Academically, the school consistently underperforms compared to state averages across all subjects. However, there is a relative strength in Mathematics, where 36.4% of students were proficient in 2025-2026, outperforming the district average of 33.6%. A concerning trend is that student proficiency rates generally decline as students progress from 3rd to 5th grade, suggesting the school may not be effectively building on prior learning. Performance has remained largely flat year-over-year, indicating current interventions are not producing significant gains.

Compared to nearby Magnolia Middle School (just 0.11 miles away), Central Elementary receives significantly less funding per student ($12,069 vs. $15,056) and has a much higher student-to-teacher ratio (16.4:1 vs. 10.8:1). This resource disparity is notable given that Central serves a younger, more economically disadvantaged population. In overlapping grades, Central outperforms Magnolia Middle in 6th-grade Mathematics (37.3% vs. 28.0%) but lags in literacy and science. The most critical takeaway is the apparent misalignment of resources: the school with the greatest need receives less funding and has larger class sizes than its counterpart just down the street.