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Mountain Home Public Schools students are outpacing state averages in most tested subjects and grade levels at the midpoint of the 2025-26 school year, according to assessment data presented to the Board of Education at its Feb. 19 meeting.
Assistant Superintendent Judy Lawrence walked the board through mid-year ATLAS results comparing school and state proficiency scores across all campuses, opening with a reminder of how the system measures student performance before diving into the numbers.
“What we’re going to showcase in the slides is proficiency,” Lawrence said. “Proficiency is your total percentage of students that score level three and level four. They do count level two as showing signs of proficiency, but when they’re scoring us on our overall proficiency scores as a district, they only count level three and four.”
Lawrence was quick to add that raw proficiency scores tell only part of the story.
“It’s not just whether they’re proficient or not, but how much are the students growing in the process throughout the year,” she said.
That growth angle dominated much of the presentation. Lawrence pointed the board’s attention to the number of students moving up through proficiency levels from the beginning of the year to the midpoint, not just those who had already crossed into the proficient range.
“If students are moving through the levels, you’re going to miss a really important part of what we’re seeing as far as their achievement,” she said. “We know we have a lot of work left to do, but we’re seeing those percentages of level ones dropping. That’s one big piece of the puzzle.”
ATLAS measures proficiency in levels one through four, with levels three and four counting toward a school’s official proficiency score. The district has been on the platform for two full school years, giving administrators a fuller picture of trends than was available when MHPS first adopted the system.
At the elementary level, kindergarten students stood out, with the district posting an ELA score of 56 against a state average of 32 at mid-year, and a math score of 27 against the state’s 25. Lawrence called it a major highlight.
“A huge highlight for kindergarten is they’re 24 above the state average in ELA,” she said. “A deep celebration for kindergarten, and there’s been a lot of intervention work to get there.”
Lawrence noted that kindergarten, first, and second grade beginning-of-year scores function as universal screeners rather than traditional assessments, meaning year-over-year comparisons require some care. Still, the trajectory was clear.
First graders at Nelson Wilks-Herron Elementary continued the trend, with mid-year ELA proficiency of 44 against the state’s 34, and math at 33 against the state’s 26. Second grade scores were close to state averages in both ELA and math at mid-year.
At Hackler Intermediate, the data showed substantial growth between the beginning and middle of the year. Third graders went from an ELA score of 14 at the start of the year to 32 at mid-year, matching the state average, while their math score climbed from 3 to 32, exceeding the state’s 21. In science, third graders posted a mid-year score of 40, clearing the state average of 34. Fourth and fifth grade students posted similar gains, with fifth grade math rising from 18 at the start of the year to 42 at mid-year, well above the state’s 30.
Lawrence told the board she was particularly encouraged by what the growth table showed at the elementary level.
“Third grade ELA started with 48 percent of their students at level one, and now at the middle of the year they’ve got that number down to 25 percent,” she said. “Twenty-three of those students moved at least one level on ATLAS. That’s the work the teachers are doing.”
She said teachers are now using the platform in a more targeted way, tracking individual students across levels rather than just watching the overall proficiency number.
“If I’m a fifth grade literacy teacher, I have: are they level one, two, three, or four at the beginning of the year? What were they at the middle of the year?” Lawrence said. “They’re keeping an eye on the number of students they have moving up the line, and if students are moving backwards, they’ll catch that too.”
Pinkston Middle School posted some of the district’s strongest margins above state averages. Sixth graders led the state by 7 points in ELA, 9 points in math, and 13 points in science at mid-year. Seventh graders showed even larger gaps, exceeding the state by 8 points in ELA, 20 points in math, and 6 points in science.
At Mountain Home Junior High, eighth grade students showed consistent growth from the beginning to the middle of the year in ELA, math, and science, with mid-year science scores of 48 against the state’s 40. Ninth grade mid-year ELA came in at 37, above the state’s 34.
At the high school level, mid-year data for most courses was still pending at the time of the meeting. Beginning-of-year data showed 10th grade ELA at 34, just above the state’s 32, while EOC Biology began the year at 49, well clear of the state’s 35. EOC Algebra began the year below the state average, which Lawrence and the board acknowledged as an area for continued attention.
“We do not have all of our EOC scores yet,” Lawrence said. “The remainder of the EOC classes are all testing either next week or the beginning of the week after. We have more information to come.”
Guy Berry College and Career Academy, which operates as its own local education agency and serves students in alternative educational settings, was presented differently from the other campuses. Rather than proficiency percentages, Lawrence showed the board how individual students were moving between levels.
“When you look at some of their initial numbers and you just see zero percent proficiency, that does not give you an accurate picture of how those students are moving,” she said. “Guy Berry has some really incredible celebrations. I was able to go to one of their collaborative team meetings.”
Lawrence said the movement she saw at Guy Berry went beyond the numbers on a slide.
“We may not have all proficiency percentages at every content area there, but we are seeing a lot of hard work and a lot of movement with the students,” she said. “The students are now building confidence that they can do it, and they’re asking how many more months do I need to get to the next level. They are interested in their scores.”
Among middle school students enrolled at Guy Berry for both testing windows, 90 percent showed growth in ELA, 89 percent in math, and 90 percent in science. Among high school students, 67 percent showed growth in ELA, EOC Biology, and EOC Algebra.
Lawrence closed by noting that the district’s ability to use the ATLAS platform has matured considerably compared to its first year on the system, and that the data is now informing decisions at every level of the organization, from individual classrooms to principals’ meetings to the leadership team.
“The other great part of ATLAS is some of those scores will be immediately available this year,” she said. “Teachers will have their kids’ scores before school is out, so we’re able to set up intervention before we even start the next year with that information.”
A teacher present at the meeting offered their own reflection on what the platform has meant for instruction, calling it unlike anything they had seen in nearly three decades in education.
