Summary:
Zip code 72022 (Bryant, AR) is home to two high schools serving grades 7-12, offering a stark contrast between a large, high-performing traditional public school and a small, specialized alternative school.
Bryant High School is the standout school in the area, a large institution with 2,369 students that consistently earns a 4-star rating and has shown a clear upward trajectory in its state ranking over the past three years. It boasts a strong graduation rate of 94.6%, significantly above the state average, and outperforms the state in English Language Arts and Reading proficiency. In contrast, Arkansas Consolidated High School-Alexander is a very small alternative school with only 106 students, serving a specialized at-risk population within the Division Of Youth Services School System. It faces extreme challenges, with a 0-star rating, a graduation rate of just 21.8%, and near-zero test scores across all subjects. The socioeconomic divide between the two schools is vast, with 48.42% of Bryant students qualifying for free/reduced lunch compared to 97.17% at Arkansas Consolidated.
Key findings reveal that while Bryant High School is on an upward trend with improving test scores and rankings, it has a curious anomaly where 9th-grade proficiency in ELA and Reading is dramatically lower than 10th-grade proficiency, suggesting a challenging transition to high school. Meanwhile, Arkansas Consolidated High School-Alexander has a very low student-to-teacher ratio of 6.9:1, which typically allows for individualized attention, but this resource does not translate into academic success, underscoring that the school's primary goals are likely stabilization and credit recovery rather than academic proficiency. For parents, this zip code offers two vastly different educational environments, with Bryant providing a strong, traditional path to graduation and college readiness, while Arkansas Consolidated serves a very specific, high-need population.
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