Summary:
Zip code 72947, serving the Mulberry, Arkansas area, contains two public schools—Marvin Primary School (grades PK-4) and Mulberry High School (grades 9-12)—both part of the Mulberry Pleasant View Bi County School District, and every single student in these schools qualifies for free or reduced lunch, indicating a community with very high economic need.
Comparing the two schools, Marvin Primary School stands out as the stronger performer academically. It consistently achieves higher proficiency rates than the high school, with 30.3% of students proficient in English and 28.6% in math, and it has shown improvement by rising from the 38th to the 21st percentile in state rankings. In contrast, Mulberry High School faces severe challenges, especially in math, where only 7.9% of students are proficient in Algebra and a mere 2.6% in Geometry. The high school has also dropped dramatically from the 54th to the 11th percentile in state rankings. Despite having a very low student-teacher ratio of 5.7:1 and higher per-student spending ($17,088), the high school’s academic results are far worse than the primary school’s, which spends less per student ($16,218) but achieves better outcomes.
A key takeaway is that while Marvin Primary School is on an upward trend, Mulberry High School is in a steep decline, creating a notable divergence within the same district and community. The high school’s graduation rate of 86.1% is below the state average, and its math crisis is a critical concern for college and career readiness. Overall, the data shows that the extreme poverty affecting 100% of students is a major factor, but the primary school appears to be managing these challenges more effectively than the high school, suggesting that different strategies may be needed at the secondary level.
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