Summary:
Zip code 72051, located in Fox, Arkansas, is home to a single high school, Rural Special High School, which serves grades 7 through 12 with a very small enrollment of 91 students.
Rural Special High School is a standout in mathematics, consistently outperforming both its district, Mountain View School District, and the state of Arkansas. In the 2025-2026 school year, its math proficiency rate of 54.3% was a full 10 percentage points higher than the district and state averages. The school also excels in advanced subjects, with Geometry proficiency at 50% (nearly double the district's 20.9%) and Biology proficiency at 60% (compared to the state's 42.7%). However, the school's performance is mixed in other areas: English Language Arts and Reading scores are near the state average, while Science proficiency lags behind at 37.2% versus the state's 44.0%. The school has an exceptionally low student-teacher ratio of 3.7:1 and high per-pupil spending of $17,218, yet 96.7% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, indicating significant economic challenges. Its graduation rate is strong at 92.3%, and the dropout rate is very low at 1.0%.
A key concern is the "8th grade slump" observed in the 2025-2026 data, where 8th graders scored dramatically lower than their peers in ELA (15.4% vs. 50% for 7th graders) and Science (15.4% vs. 50% for 7th graders). Additionally, the school's state ranking is highly volatile, swinging from the 31st percentile in 2024-2025 to the 88th percentile in 2025-2026, a pattern typical of very small schools where a few students can heavily influence overall metrics. This volatility makes year-to-year comparisons less reliable, but the school's consistent strength in math and science suggests targeted instructional strengths worth investigating.
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