Arkansas is honoring the schools where students are learning fastest — including the ones beating the odds

Some schools start with every advantage. Others start with very little — and still move their students forward fastest. The University of Arkansas's Office for Education Policy has named this year's Growth Awards, which rank schools not on raw test scores but on how much their students actually learned. Twenty schools at each level — elementary, middle and high — earned overall growth honors, with separate top-10 lists for math, English and, for the first time, science. Its Beating the Odds list goes further, celebrating high-growth schools where at least two in three students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The overall leaders: Mountain Springs Elementary, Ruth Barker Middle School in Bentonville, and Jacksonville Lighthouse High.

SDG 4 · Quality education