The top reported proficiency rate is 50% in Science. The lowest is 46% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Russellville Intermediate School
Russellville Intermediate School serves a single grade, fifth, which is a focused and intentional transition year before students move to middle school. The building sits within the Russellville School District in a city that doubles as the Pope County seat and the home of Arkansas Tech University, giving the school a distinctly college-town backdrop. Russellville itself is a compact, growing city with a mix of residential neighborhoods, commercial corridors along I-40, and major employers such as Tyson, Con-Agra, Firestone, and the state’s only nuclear power plant just outside town. Lake Dardanelle and the Arkansas River border the city, and the downtown historic district functions as a civic anchor.
The student body reflects the broader community. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The population is predominantly white, with a sizable Hispanic enrollment and smaller shares of Black, Asian, and multiracial students. That demographic profile, combined with the school’s Title I eligibility, shapes the support systems a parent would want to understand.
Academically, Russellville Intermediate’s fifth graders took the Arkansas ATLAS assessments across math, English language arts, and science. In math, about half of students scored at the proficient level or higher. In English language arts, the figure was similar. Science proficiency was slightly higher. These results place the school’s overall proficiency in the top quartile relative to other districts in Pope County, which includes a mix of rural and small-city systems. That is a meaningful strength, especially for a single-grade building where results reflect a single cohort in a transitional year. Sixth-grade results were suppressed in the data, likely because the school enrolls only a handful of sixth graders, so those numbers do not give a full picture of the school’s upper-grade performance.
Because the school serves only fifth grade, there is no graduation rate, no chronic absenteeism data reported, and no information on discipline, course access, or staffing from the available sources. A parent may want to ask the school or district directly about how discipline is handled, how students are prepared for middle school, and what enrichment or intervention programs are in place. The district brief did not reveal any recent major changes, so the current structure appears stable.
Housing in the Russellville area is more affordable than the national median, with home values trending slightly downward on a year-over-year basis and rents rising at a modest pace. The estimated monthly mortgage payment, assuming a conventional down payment, is roughly in line with what a household earning the national median income could manage, though local incomes may vary. The city’s growth is steady but not rapid, with infill development rather than large-scale annexation.
What this school offers is a contained, transitional fifth-grade year in a district that feeds into a well-regarded local economy and a university town environment. The proficiency data suggest that students, on average, are meeting state expectations at a rate that compares favorably with other schools in the county, particularly in science. The student population is economically diverse, and the school is not trying to be all things to all grades; it is purpose-built for one year of instruction. For a family looking at the Russellville district, this is the entry point to the intermediate level before the middle school years begin. The missing data points on discipline and support services are gaps worth filling with a direct conversation at the school. Overall, Russellville Intermediate appears to be a solid, above-average option for fifth grade within the region, grounded in a community that combines industrial and university anchors with a manageable cost of living.
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