The first-time release of district letter grades and a revamped report card website, both announced Thursday, mark the latest efforts by Arkansas officials to draw more attention to student performance under the LEARNS Act.
State Education Secretary Jacob Oliva said the information will spotlight which districts need greater support from the agency while helping families to make more-informed choices about the schools their children attend.
Arkansas School Boards Association Policy Director Lucas Harder warned the new information provides an “additional opportunity for confusion” among the public.
The redesigned website, myschoolinfo.arkansas.gov, features a search bar that allows families to search for the report cards of specific schools or districts. Once a school or district is selected, users can see how it compares against counterparts across the state. Each page includes an explanation of what the grades mean, as well as a separate tab that provides general information on the school or district.
The letter grades are based upon the 2024-25 school year results from the Arkansas Teaching and Learning Assessment System. Letter grades for individual schools were released in September, though Thursday was the first time Arkansas school districts received letter grades.
Act 341 of 2025, a massive effort to overhaul higher education known as the Arkansas ACCESS Act, called for the Education Department to develop a formula for determining district letter grades.
Out of 254 total districts:
• 23 received A’s;
• 98 received B’s;
• 98 received C’s;
• 24 received D’s; and
• 11 received F’s.
Although several district officials in Central Arkansas said the new grades demonstrated their students’ academic growth, the North Little Rock School District referred to the letter grade it received — an F — as “totally unacceptable.”
“Every child in NLRSD deserves high quality teaching and learning in a safe, healthy, and supportive learning environment,” Superintendent Gregory Pilewski said in a statement. “We recognize the need for immediate improvements.”
Pilewski said the district “anticipated a need to change direction” and had already made changes to improve the district’s outcomes, such as replacing early releases on Wednesdays with additional instructional time, providing “consistent” instructional coaching to teachers and reorganizing its central office.
The Little Rock School District received a C, while the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District received a D. The Benton School District received an A, while the Bryant School District received a B.
Jermall Wright, superintendent for the Little Rock district, said in a video statement that he was first excited about seeing what he described as the progress reflected in the letter grades, but that educators in his district “still have a lot of work to do.”
“I think the C represents more than just a grade,” Wright said. “It represents the progress that we have made, the significant progress that we have made over the last few years, and a commitment to keep that train going.”
Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District Superintendent Jeremy Owoh said in a statement that his district would use the new letter grades to “focus our approach on allocating resources and support across the District”
“We recognize that continued, focused work is essential,” Owoh said.
As with school letter grades, districts in wealthier areas tended to fare better while those in areas with higher rates of poverty were more likely to receive lower grades. Children who live in poverty tend to perform less well in school than their wealthier counterparts, according to a 2016 article published in Academic Pediatrics.
In Northwest Arkansas, the Bentonville and Fayetteville school districts received A grades, and the Rogers and Springdale school districts received B’s. Districts in the Delta, which is largely rural, tended to fare more poorly. The Pine Bluff School District meanwhile received an F.
Oliva said in a news briefing Thursday morning the addition of the district letter grades matters because education officials need to see not just how schools are doing in individual neighborhoods, but how performance fares across districts as a whole.
As an example, he cited a grade-A district that also had a grade-D school, though he did not name the district.
“Is that acceptable to a community like that?” Oliva asked. “All the schools in the community are performing very well, except for one. We need to work with that district in home in on that one.”
Oliva also took aim at the North Little Rock School District and the lagging performance of North Little Rock 6 Academy, which was previously known as Seventh Street Elementary. He called for the district to shut down the school, which received an F and, according to Oliva, has struggled with academic performance for more than a decade.
“It’s time for us to start having conversations about how we’re going to close that school and make sure those kids are afforded high-quality teachers and a high-quality learning environment,” Oliva said. “We have failed a generation of kids by letting districts hide behind individual school grades, so that’s no longer acceptable.”
The addition of the district letter grades is one of several changes recently made to how student performance is used by the state and shared with the public. In August, lawmakers approved a new public school grading system, and the state shifted from ACT Aspire to ATLAS. The new assessment was first administered in the 2023-24 school year, and the 2024-25 school year was the first in which official school letter grades were presented.
Harder, with the Arkansas School Boards Association, said the creation of the new district letter grades provides another opportunity for officials, families and others to be confused about what is happening in a given district, which places an onus on state and district leaders to ensure communities understand what the district grades really mean.
“It does put a lot of impact both on the states and on the districts to try and make sure their community is educated as to what their letter grades actually mean,” Harder said.
With support from the ADG Community Journalism Project, LEARNS reporter Josh Snyder covers the impact of the law on the K-12 education system across the state, and its effect on teachers, students, parents and communities. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette maintains full editorial control over this article and all other coverage.