Summary:
In zip code 72390, there is one high school, Central High School, serving grades 7 through 12 in West Helena, Arkansas, as part of the Helena West Helena School District.
Central High School is a high-poverty school with 94.53% of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch, and it spends a significant $18,315 per student, well above the national average. Despite this high spending and a very low student-teacher ratio of 7.8:1, academic proficiency rates are dramatically low. For the 2025-2026 school year, only 13.9% of students are proficient in English Language Arts (compared to the state average of 39.4%), 7.7% in Mathematics (state: 44.1%), and just 1.8% in Geometry (state: 26.4%). The school ranks in the bottom 8% of Arkansas high schools (269 out of 293), and its district ranks in the bottom 2% statewide (245 out of 251).
However, there are some positive notes. The school boasts a graduation rate of 91.6%, which is above the Arkansas state average of 90.1%, and a low dropout rate of 0.9%. A glimmer of hope appears in 9th grade Reading, where 30.6% of students are proficient, coming within 10 percentage points of the state average. Year-over-year performance is inconsistent, with Mathematics proficiency dropping from 15.0% to 7.7% between 2024-2025 and 2025-2026, while Biology improved from 5.1% to 13.0%. Overall, Central High School effectively retains students and graduates them, but faces profound challenges in achieving academic proficiency, likely tied to the high poverty rate in the area.
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