Earle Learning Academies

Earle Elementary School in Earle, AR, is a small, rural school serving 195 students in grades PK through 6, where nearly every student comes from an economically disadvantaged background.

This school faces a severe and persistent academic crisis, consistently ranking in the bottom 5% of Arkansas elementary schools for the past decade. Its proficiency rates are the lowest in the region, with only 18.6% of students proficient in English Language Arts and 13.7% in Math. This is dramatically lower than nearby schools like Richland Elementary School, which serves a similar population but achieves proficiency rates two to three times higher. A particularly troubling pattern is a "4th Grade Cliff," where 4th-grade scores plummet to near zero in all subjects, suggesting a possible systemic issue with instruction or curriculum at that grade level.

Despite spending a remarkably high $14,604 per student—more than any nearby school—Earle achieves the lowest academic outcomes. For comparison, Wynne Intermediate School spends $12,066 per student and outperforms Earle in every subject. This disconnect between high spending and low results indicates that the problem is not a lack of resources, but how those resources are used. The Earle School District must urgently investigate the 4th-grade drop and fundamentally change its instructional strategy to turn around a decade of stagnation.