King Elementary School, Van Buren AR

Original Research by School Decision on King Elementary School

KingElementary School serves students from prekindergarten through fifth grade in Van Buren, Arkansas, as part of the Van Buren School District, the largest district in Crawford County. The city of Van Buren is the county seat and the second-largest city in the Fort Smith metropolitan area. It has a historic downtown core with restored buildings, a courthouse that is the oldest functioning one west of the Mississippi River, and the King Opera House. Manufacturing, food processing, and medicine anchor the local economy, with major employers including Simmons Foods, the school district itself, USA Truck, and Baptist Health. The city is growing steadily, and its location at the junction of interstate highways supports tourism and logistics. Outside the historic downtown, the city is car-dependent, and the school district’s campuses are spread across the city rather than clustered together.

King Elementary is one of six elementary schools in the district. The student body is diverse, with a mix of white, Hispanic, and multiracial students, and a smaller number of Black, Asian, and other backgrounds. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the economic profile of the families the school serves.

On state assessments from the 2024-25 school year, using Arkansas’s ATLAS test, King Elementary’s proficiency rates across math, English language arts, and science for grades three through five were below the midpoint when compared with other schools in Crawford County. Overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades placed the school in the bottom quartile relative to districts in the county. In each grade and subject, the share of students scoring at the proficient level or above was modest. For example, in grade four, about a third of students met the bar in English language arts, while in grade five, the share was lower. These are areas where families may want to discuss support and intervention strategies with the school. Because the school serves only elementary grades, there is no graduation rate to report.

Information about recent district-level initiatives, curriculum changes, or millage updates was not available in the data provided, so that context cannot be offered here. The school’s own program offerings were also not detailed in the materials we had.

For a family considering this school, the setting is a mid-sized, growing city with a historic downtown and a mix of industrial and service employment. King Elementary serves a high-poverty student population, and its test results indicate that academic proficiency is an area where the school, as part of the district, is working to improve relative to its county peers. The school’s size and grade span are typical for an elementary school in the area, and it operates as a regular public school without charter or magnet status.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 314%

School 14% · District 43% · ▼ 29 pts below district

▼ 23 pts below state median · ▼ 23 pts below county median

Grade 428%

School 28% · District 45% · ▼ 17 pts below district

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

Grade 522%

School 22% · District 42% · ▼ 20 pts below district

▼ 11 pts below state median

English language arts

Grade 317%

School 17% · District 36% · ▼ 19 pts below district

▼ 16 pts below state median · ▼ 18 pts below county median

Grade 430%

School 30% · District 37% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▼ 6 pts below state median · ▼ 4 pts below county median

Grade 516%

School 16% · District 32% · ▼ 17 pts below district

▼ 18 pts below state median

Science

Grade 317%

School 17% · District 38% · ▼ 21 pts below district

▼ 19 pts below state median · ▼ 21 pts below county median

Grade 426%

School 26% · District 37% · ▼ 11 pts below district

▼ 10 pts below state median · ▼ 9 pts below county median

Grade 522%

School 22% · District 33% · ▼ 11 pts below district

▼ 11 pts below state median

This schoolVAN BUREN 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.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 5Lower-income15%Higher-income35%21 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 5Lower-income16%Higher-income47%31 pp gap