Bradford Elementary School, Bradford AR

Original Research by School Decision on Bradford Elementary School

Bradford Elementary School serves kindergarten through sixth grade in the small, rural town of Bradford, in northern White County. The school sits within the Bradford School District and draws students from Bradford and the surrounding parts of White, Jackson, and Independence counties. The town itself is compact, built around a traditional grid of Main and Front Streets with remnants of its railroad-depot origins. It has a public library and a few retail businesses, but most residents commute to Searcy or Newport for work. Bradford has seen a gradual population decline over the past several decades and shows no signs of the rapid growth reshaping many parts of the state.

The student body is composed overwhelmingly of white students, with small numbers of students who identify as two or more races, Hispanic, or Black. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, a figure that is common in rural Arkansas districts with a limited local economic base. No data was reported on the share of students with disabilities or English learners, so that dimension of student need is not available to assess. The school is not a charter and does not appear to operate as a magnet.

On the Arkansas ATLAS state assessments, Bradford Elementary’s results show a pattern of low proficiency that becomes noticeably weaker in the upper elementary grades. In third grade, about a quarter of students met proficiency in math and roughly one in five did so in English language arts. By fourth grade, those figures improved. But in fifth grade math only a small share of students reached the proficient bar, and in sixth grade that share was extremely low. In English language arts, fifth grade results were modest, and sixth grade recorded no students at the proficient level. Science results followed a similar grade-level decline. When placed against other districts in White County, Bradford Elementary’s overall proficiency index sits in the bottom quartile. These are the test results available; the school serves kindergarten through sixth grade, so there is no graduation rate to consider.

The enrollment is small enough that individual grade-level cohorts can vary meaningfully from year to year, which is worth keeping in mind when reading any single year’s scores. A parent may want to discuss with the school how it supports students as they move into the upper elementary and middle school years, where the performance drop-off in the data is steep. The district brief did not reveal any recent significant changes or initiatives affecting curriculum, property tax, or pedagogy, leaving it unclear what direction the school system is taking to address the academic patterns in its elementary building.

Housing in the area is priced well below national and state medians, and a typical home is affordable relative to incomes. The town offers a quiet, low-cost setting for families who want a small-school environment in a rural community and who are willing to examine the academic results closely against their expectations for their child.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 326%

School 26% · District 26%

▼ 11 pts below state median · ▼ 17 pts below county median

Grade 442%

School 42% · District 42%

▲ 2 pts above state median

Grade 512%

School 12% · District 12%

▼ 21 pts below state median

Grade 63%

School 3% · District 3%

▼ 34 pts below state median

English language arts

Grade 319%

School 19% · District 19%

▼ 13 pts below state median · ▼ 15 pts below county median

Grade 442%

School 42% · District 42%

▲ 5 pts above state median

Grade 527%

School 27% · District 27%

▼ 6 pts below state median

Grade 60%

School 0% · District 0%

▼ 33 pts below state median

Science

Grade 329%

School 29% · District 29%

▼ 7 pts below state median · ▼ 12 pts below county median

Grade 439%

School 39% · District 39%

▲ 3 pts above state median

Grade 515%

School 15% · District 15%

▼ 18 pts below state median

Grade 611%

School 11% · District 11%

▼ 22 pts below state median

This schoolBRADFORD SCHOOL DISTRICT, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.