Arkansas students’ end-of-year test scores improved across grade levels and subject areas, state officials said Thurday, but most students still aren’t meeting performance targets.
Results from the Arkansas Teaching and Learning Assessment System exam, known as ATLAS, showed students’ overall proficiency rose from 36.9% in 2025 to 42.2% in 2026, according to an executive summary of the scores.
The number of students performing at the lowest level across all subjects declined from 27.3% in 2025 to 23.1% in 2026, according to the report.
This is only the third year that Arkansas has used the ATLAS test, limiting direct comparisons to years before 2024. State Education Secretary Jacob Oliva has said the state shifted to ATLAS from its previous end-of-year test, the ACT Aspire, to better align measurement of student performance with Arkansas’ academic standards.
“The 2026 ATLAS exam scores confirm what we’re hearing from educators across the Natural State: Arkansas LEARNS is working and students across Arkansas are doing better because of it,” Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a news release.
Sanders’ signature legislative package on education, the LEARNS Act, mandated the state move to a new student test and adopt a new grading system for schools and districts. The state offers grants for districts to administer high-impact tutoring, and students who struggle to read can also qualify for supplemental literacy tutoring.
Under LEARNS, third grade students who don’t read at grade level will be held back, though school districts also may give students good-cause exemptions from the requirement. Early numbers suggest that large numbers of third graders in some districts will be promoted to fourth grade even though they fell short of the literacy standards.
LEARNS also includes the Educational Freedom Account program, which significantly expanded state taxpayer funding of student tuition and other costs related to private schools and homeschooling. Over 44,000 students received an Educational Freedom Account in the 2025-26 school year, the first year participation was open to all K-12 students.
Participants in the school choice program are not required to take the ATLAS but still must take a national, norm-referenced test each year.
In the 2024-25 school year, Arkansas students showed slight increases in subject mastery overall, with the most notable increases in math and science.
The results come roughly a month after the release of the 2026 Education Scorecard, a cross-state analysis that says schools across the nation — including Arkansas — are in the midst of a “learning recession” that began in 2013. Math and reading performance declined over the past decade in most places, according to that report. Though the longer-term trend is downward nationally, the Education Scorecard says student performance has partly rebounded from the damage done by COVID-19.
As of 2024, Arkansas’ math and reading scores continued to lag national averages on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test often called the Nation’s Report Card.
Students who take ATLAS are classified into one of four performance levels, with level four being the highest. Level three indicates mastery of grade-level content, according to the report released Thursday. It describes each level as follows:
Level 4: Students demonstrate an advanced understanding of the knowledge and skills required of the grade-level standards. These students are on track for career and college, and demonstrate readiness for advanced and accelerated content at the next grade/course.
Level 3: Students demonstrate a proficient understanding of knowledge and skills and show mastery of grade-level standards. These students are on track for career and college, and demonstrate readiness for content at the next grade/course.
Level 2: Students demonstrate a basic understanding of knowledge and skills required of the grade-level standards and personalized support and intervention may be needed to access content taught in the next grade/course.
Level 1: Students demonstrate limited understanding of knowledge and skills required of the grade-level standards and will require significant support/scaffolding and intervention to access content taught at the next grade/course.
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With support from the ADG Community Journalism Project, LEARNS reporter Josh Snyder covers the impact of the law on the K-12 education system across the state, and its effect on teachers, students, parents and communities. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette maintains full editorial control over this article and all other coverage. View all LEARNS Act coverage at arkansasonline.com/learns
