Sheridan School District Decision brief · 2025–26 accountability results
Prepared for the superintendent and cabinet · independent analysis of public ADE data
Sheridan School District · September 2026

Four decisions that move Sheridan from a B to an A

The 2026 results are good and the improvement is real. They also point, with unusual precision, at a small number of places where this district is leaving performance on the table — and at four moves it can make with people and practices it already has.

The finding

Sheridan's ceiling is not achievement. It is growth — for the students who start behind, in the elementary grades, in mathematics.

Students arrive testing well and graduate well: achievement sits at the 76th percentile of Arkansas districts and graduation at 94.8%. But three of the eleven indicators that determine the district's letter grade are rated 2 out of 4, and all three measure how much ground students gain in a year. Every one of the four decisions below targets one of those three ratings.
58/255
Statewide rank, and rising
A B grade, up 28.2 points — a bigger one-year gain than 70% of Arkansas districts.
18th
Percentile of your elementary grades
Sheridan Elementary and Intermediate sit 116 points below schools serving the same kind of students.
3
Indicator ratings of 2 out of 4
Math growth, and reading and math growth for the lowest quartile. A districts average 4s here.
Diagnosis

You are running two districts

Each campus compared to Arkansas schools of the same type serving a similar share of low-income students — the fairest benchmark the public data allows. Secondary is strong. Elementary is not. This single picture explains most of the district's gap to an A.

Distance from the peer median, in accountability points. Paired P–2 campuses share their 3–5 partner's score, so the two intermediate campuses represent all four elementary buildings.

What the grade is waiting on

Eleven ratings. Three of them are the problem.

Arkansas builds the district letter grade from eleven equally weighted indicators, each rated 1 to 4 — not from the total score. Sheridan already rates like an A district on graduation and merit. The gap is concentrated, and it is entirely in growth.

Amber marks a rating of 2. The median A district scores 4 on every achievement and growth indicator and 3 on graduation and merit — which is to say Sheridan's readiness work is already there, and its growth work is not.

The decisions

Four moves, this school year

Each one targets a rating of 2, each has a named owner and a signal you can check by December, and — critically — each has already been executed successfully inside this district within the last twelve months. None of these require a new vendor, a new program, or new money.

Why these will work

Sheridan has already solved every one of these problems

The strongest argument for each decision is not research literature. It is that another building in this district moved the same indicator, in the same year, with the same demographics and the same programs.

Protect

Three assets to defend while you fix the rest

Improvement plans routinely damage what was already working. These three are performing at or near the top of the state and should be explicitly exempted from any redesign — and documented now, while the people who built them are still here.

Avoid

Four ways this goes wrong

Execution

The first ninety days

Nothing here requires board action or new funding. The binding constraint is calendar time and adult attention, which is why the sequence matters more than the plan.

How you will know

Four numbers to put on the December agenda

State results arrive too late to steer by. These four leading indicators are available internally by mid-year and each one maps directly to a decision above.

Basis

What this rests on, and what it does not

Confidence is high on

  • The diagnosis. The campus split and the three ratings of 2 come straight from the state's own file and are not matters of interpretation.
  • The internal precedents. Every magnitude quoted for a Sheridan campus is the state's published figure for that campus, year over year.
  • The direction of the fix. All four decisions move indicators that are, by formula, a third of the district's grade.

Confidence is lower on

  • Attribution. The state publishes outcomes, not practices. Which specific change produced East End's fourth-grade math gain is an inference your own staff can confirm in a morning — and should, before it is copied.
  • Reported poverty. District low-income share rose 9.8 points in one year, which looks like a reporting change. Peer comparisons here use the reported figure.
  • Small groups. Subgroup movements at a single campus can represent a handful of students and should not drive staffing decisions on their own.

Campus-by-campus detail → Peer & position analysis → Full indicator explorer →