Lisa Academy Springdale

Lisa Academy Springdale is a K-8 charter school in Springdale, AR, serving 450 students and operating as part of the Lisa Academy district. The school has shown impressive recent growth, climbing from a 2-star rating in the 2022-2023 school year to a 3-star rating for the 2025-2026 school year, a significant 20-percentile-point improvement over two years.

Lisa Academy Springdale stands out from nearby schools in the Springdale School District in several key ways. The school's strongest area is mathematics, with 50.9% of all students proficient in Math for the 2025-2026 school year—well above the state average of 44.1% and dramatically higher than many neighboring schools like Parson Hills Elementary, George Elementary, and Bayyari Elementary, which have remained in the bottom 20% of the state. The school's K-8 model provides a stable, continuous learning environment, and it achieves strong results with a lower student-teacher ratio (16.7:1) and lower per-student spending ($11,521) compared to many lower-performing neighbors—for example, Harp Elementary spends $18,402 per student but achieves significantly lower test scores.

While the school excels overall, there is a notable drop in performance in 8th grade, where proficiency rates fall to 22.7% in ELA and Reading, 27.8% in Math, and 18.2% in Science—significantly below state averages. This "8th-grade cliff" is a critical concern that the school will need to address to continue its upward trajectory. However, the school builds a strong foundation in early grades, with 3rd graders outperforming the state by wide margins in Math (62.2% vs. 45.5%) and Science (54.7% vs. 45.4%). Lisa Academy Springdale is a high-quality alternative to traditional public schools in the area, serving a student population with 73.78% qualifying for free or reduced lunch, and it is one of only two schools in its immediate cluster to achieve a 3-star rating or higher, alongside John Tyson Elementary (4 stars).