Stephens Elementary

Stephens Elementary is a PK-5 public school in the Little Rock School District serving 474 students in a high-poverty area, where 99.37% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. The school has been ranked in the bottom 1% of Arkansas elementary schools for five of the last six years, with academic proficiency rates critically low across most subjects. However, there is a notable bright spot: 3rd-grade Science proficiency reached 22.3%, the school's highest single subject score, suggesting a potential area of instructional strength that could be replicated in other grades and subjects.

The most striking feature of Stephens is the disconnect between its high spending and low results. The school spends $17,478 per student, which is significantly more than high-performing nearby schools like Forest Heights STEM Academy ($14,743) and Pulaski Heights Elementary ($15,167), yet its proficiency rates are a fraction of theirs. For example, Stephens achieves only 14% proficiency in English Language Arts compared to 53.7% at Forest Heights. This spending paradox is also seen at Washington Elementary, another struggling school with 99% poverty that spends $25,295 per student but still only achieves 16.5% ELA proficiency. These comparisons suggest that simply increasing funding is not enough—the money must be translated into effective instruction.

Encouragingly, the most recent data shows a significant improvement, with ELA proficiency nearly doubling from 7.5% to 14% and Science from 10.4% to 17%. This could indicate a new intervention or curriculum change taking effect. Additionally, Friendship Academy Little Rock Elementary, which serves 76.5% low-income students, achieves 51.5% proficiency in Math—nearly four times higher than Stephens' 13%. This proves that high poverty does not have to determine low achievement, and Stephens can learn from such models to improve outcomes for its students.