Greenwood School District's official 2025–26 letter-grade announcement. The district received an A and its graphic lists $293,708 in reward and recognition money for the 2026 school year. Image: Greenwood Public Schools.
Hey Fort Smith — here's a local school update worth paying attention to, because these aren't old rankings getting recycled on Facebook.
The Arkansas Department of Education released the new 2025–26 school and district letter grades Thursday, Sept. 17, at 1 p.m., and there are some meaningful changes around Sebastian County.
The state's updated school-performance dashboard is live now, which means parents can look beyond the headline letter and dig into individual school results.
The biggest Fort Smith headline: Fort Smith Public Schools says its district grade improved from a C to a B, with nine schools showing growth.
That's an actual year-over-year district improvement, not a change in somebody else's private ranking system.
Last November, when Arkansas issued district letter grades for the first time, FSPS officially reported receiving a C for the 2024–25 school year.
So moving to a B in the new report is a genuine one-letter improvement under Arkansas' state accountability system.
Greenwood stayed in the top group.
Greenwood Public Schools also posted its new result Thursday and says the district received an A for 2025–26.
Greenwood was already an A district last year, so this is more about maintaining that level than making a jump.
And an A is not common statewide.
Arkansas reported 26 school districts with an A, along with 114 Bs, 88 Cs, 17 Ds and nine Fs.
There's another number in Greenwood's announcement that's worth noticing too.
The district's official 2026 letter-grade graphic lists $293,708 in reward and recognition money for the school year.
So this isn't just an A graphic the district gets to put on social media. There's real money connected to school performance and state recognition programs.
Greenwood Junior High had an especially strong result.
The school announced Thursday afternoon that it earned an A letter grade for 2025–26.
GJHS also says it ranked among the top 10% of schools statewide for both growth and proficiency and was awarded $52,000 in recognition of that performance.
That part tells us more than the A by itself.
A school can have high-performing students but weaker year-to-year growth, or strong growth while still working to raise overall proficiency.
Ranking near the top of Arkansas in both categories is a stronger signal.
There's also a separate Fort Smith result that shouldn't get buried.
The Institute for the Creative Arts, a Fort Smith-based charter high school serving 49 students, went from an F to an A in the new report.
That's a huge letter-grade jump.
The small enrollment matters when comparing it with a district the size of Fort Smith Public Schools, and the Institute is separate from FSPS, so its A should not be mixed into the FSPS district grade.
So what does a B or an A actually mean?
Arkansas' current accountability system is built around three broad areas: achievement, growth and readiness.
For elementary and middle schools, multiple measures look at how students perform and how much they improve.
At the high-school level, readiness also plays a larger role.
For district grades, Arkansas says data from schools across the district are compiled together and the high-school accountability formula is used to calculate the district result.
So this is not simply:
“Kids took one test and Greenwood got an A.”
And it's definitely not:
“Fort Smith got a B, therefore every FSPS school is a B.”
Individual schools inside the same district can have very different results.
That's why the state dashboard is more useful than stopping at one letter.
ADE's My School Info site was updated Sept. 17 with the new school performance report card, letter-grade information and tools for looking at individual campuses.
Parents can search their child's school directly here:
Arkansas My School Info — search your school or district
If you've got a kid in FSPS, Greenwood or another local district, that's the page I'd actually spend a few minutes on.
Look at your child's school.
Then look at whether the result is being driven by achievement, growth or both.
A school with mediocre proficiency but strong growth is telling you something different from a school with high proficiency but very little growth.
And if a school's grade suddenly moves two or three letters in either direction, that's where it's worth asking what changed.
Don't turn the letters into either propaganda or doom.
A district moving from C to B is good news.
There's no reason to downplay it.
But a B doesn't mean Fort Smith Public Schools suddenly solved every academic problem it had last year.
Same thing in Greenwood.
An A is strong performance under the state system, especially when only 26 Arkansas districts received one.
But an A doesn't mean every student is automatically on grade level or that every campus is perfect.
These grades are useful because they give families and the community another measurable checkpoint.
They become useless when people treat one letter like the entire story.
Hey Fort Smith — here's the useful version.
The new Arkansas school grades came out today.
Fort Smith Public Schools moved from a C last year to a B this year.
FSPS says nine schools showed growth.
Greenwood School District earned another A, putting it among just 26 A-rated districts statewide.
Greenwood's official graphic also lists $293,708 in reward and recognition money.
Greenwood Junior High says it earned an A, ranked in the state's top 10% for both proficiency and growth and received $52,000.
And separately, the small Fort Smith-based Institute for the Creative Arts jumped from an F to an A.
If you've got kids in any of these districts, don't stop at the Facebook graphic.
Pull up your child's actual school on My School Info.
That's where you can tell whether the improvement is happening at the campus your kid walks into every morning.
Community takeaway: Arkansas released its new 2025–26 school and district accountability grades Sept. 17. Fort Smith Public Schools says its district grade improved from C to B, while Greenwood School District maintained an A. Greenwood Junior High earned an A and says it ranked in the top 10% statewide for both growth and proficiency. Parents can now view school-level results through Arkansas My School Info instead of relying only on districtwide grades.
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Sources: Arkansas Department of Education — 2025–26 letter-grade dashboard · Arkansas My School Info — school performance report cards · Fort Smith Public Schools — current News + Events feed · Greenwood Public Schools — official district letter-grade announcement · Greenwood Junior High — A grade, top-10% performance and award announcement · Talk Business & Politics — statewide Arkansas school-grade results
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