A clear explanation of the data and the method, so you can judge how much weight to give the numbers.
Every number here comes from the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) school, district and state summary files for its statewide tests. Arkansas gave ACT Aspire from 2018 to 2023 (no test in 2020) and ATLAS from 2024. For each school, district and the state, DESE reports how many students were tested and the percentage at each level, to one decimal place. In 2026 it also prints the number of students at each level, which is used wherever it is shown. DESE does not publish an average score, so the average shown is estimated from the level shares.
County results are added up from the schools in each county. Arkansas’s school and district numbers begin with the state’s own county code.
Grade 9 and grade 10 ELA (both tests), and grade 9 and grade 10 Math and Science (ACT Aspire, 2018 to 2023): every student in the grade takes the test that spring.
Algebra I, Geometry and Biology (ATLAS, from 2024): students take each test in the year they take the course, in any grade. Middle-school students who take Algebra I early are included, counted at their middle school (about 1 in 5 Algebra I testers is in grade 7 or 8). DESE reports each grade separately, so a school’s course result adds up its grades.
Arkansas leaves out any group of fewer than 10 students. For the course tests that happens one grade at a time, so a school’s total can miss a few students in a grade where only a handful took the test. A percentile compares a score with that year’s takers of the same test.
Arkansas publishes the exact scale-score range for each level (for example, ATLAS grade 10 ELA is Level 3 at 1060-1072). Given a score, we:
That gives the percentile: the estimated share of students in the group who scored at or below the entered score.
The bell-like curve on each chart is a truncated-normal distribution fitted so that its area within each level matches the level shares, centered on that estimated average score. It’s there to visualize the shape of the group’s scores. The level shares set the headline percentile (steps above); the curve only decides where inside the student’s own level the line falls.
The score range for each level is on the score guides. Level 3 and Level 4 (ATLAS) and Ready and Exceeding (ACT Aspire) meet Arkansas’s standard.
ATLAS, from 2024 (Level 1 / Level 2 / Level 3 / Level 4), from the cut scores the Arkansas State Board of Education approved on October 10, 2024:
ACT Aspire, 2018 to 2023 (In Need of Support / Close / Ready / Exceeding):
The Math and Science ranges are ACT’s own Readiness Levels (the ACT Aspire Summative Technical Manual). ACT sets only one ELA benchmark, so the ELA ranges are the ones Arkansas set for its own reporting (DESE’s ESSA business rules, Appendix A), with the ELA score’s 403-449 range from the same manual.
In spring 2021 few students in grades 6 to 10 took the ACT Aspire Writing test (about 2,500 of 35,000 in grade 9, against nearly all of them in other years). DESE still reported that year’s ELA results on the same four levels, and they are shown that way here. That year ACT’s own “met the ELA benchmark” share runs slightly below DESE’s Ready and Exceeding share (by under 1 point statewide).
The paid progress report puts every high-school test your child took in one table, with the percentile at each level from the school to the state, and charts each subject across the years.
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