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Schools of Arkansas
Please click a region on the map to begin.
Since its beginning, education in Arkansas has been a constantly
evolving and improving system. Even today Arkansas’s schools continue to
strive for improvement. While the days of the one-room schoolhouse and
small schools in every community are gone forever, as you travel across
every region of Arkansas you will see these historic school buildings
dotting the landscape. In some cases the entire community the school
serviced has all but vanished, and an ever increasing part of the
population never experienced school and life in “the good old days.”
However, as long as these pillars of the past continue to grace our
neighborhoods, highways, and country roads, we will always be reminded
of the past and Arkansas’s rich educational legacy.
If any society is to progress, it must educate its young. The first
bright spot in Arkansas’s educational history began with the founding of
Cane Hill College in 1842, but the college was closely tied to the
Cumberland Presbyterian Church and received no financial help from the
state. The first government sponsorship of education in Arkansas came in
the form of the 1842 “Common School Law,” which set aside the sixteenth
section of land in each geographic township to be sold for the
construction and operation of public schools. Some communities made the
most of the program and organized schools prior to the Civil War, but
education was still largely a private matter. The most unfortunate part
of the system was the tuition requirements for students, which made
formal education an unattainable goal for those who most desperately
needed it, the poor.
The Henderson School in Fayetteville was constructed by the
Freedman’s Bureau, otherwise known as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedman
and Abandoned Land. The Bureau would supervise efforts to educate former
slaves and their children and provide school buildings. (Courtesy of
Arkansas History Commission)
The Mississippi County town of Marie proudly displayed its new
school with a before and after photo. Many early rural schools were held
in any available structure such as the log building seen here.
(Courtesy of Arkansas History Commission)
The Administration Building of the Second District Agricultural
School – now Arkansas Tech University – was one of the first structures
on the campus. Designed by Frank Blaisdell in 1910, it is now known as
Craigbaugh Hall. (Courtesy of Arkansas History Commission)
The Dyess Colony, located ten miles from Wilson, was a
cooperative agricultural community implemented by the Resettlement
Administration. Dyess High School at the colony was part of the New Deal
effort to provide a “new order” for qualifying low-income farm
families. (Courtesy of Arkansas History Commission)
The first truly public school system in Arkansas was created during
Reconstruction. For the first time, teachers had licensing requirements
and schools throughout the state had a standardized course curriculum.
In 1869, Arkansas had over 600 schools educating more than 67,000
students. By 1871, the number of schools had more than doubled and
student enrollment was pushing 108,000. Higher education also received
attention from the Reconstruction government. In 1871, Fayetteville was
chosen as the location for Arkansas’s first state-supported college, the
Arkansas Industrial University, later renamed the University of
Arkansas. Other colleges to be founded in this same era usually had
close ties to church denominations, including Arkansas College in
Batesville (now Lyon College), Hendrix College in Conway, and Ouachita
Baptist in Arkadelphia.
By 1900 the schools were having problems. Attendance was lagging
around 50 percent and Arkansas had the shortest school term in the
nation. In an attempt to help remedy the problem, the state finally
passed a law requiring children between 7 and 15 to attend school and
adopted standard grade school textbooks for the state. Larger gains were
made in higher education during this period. In 1907, the State Normal
School, later named the University of Central Arkansas, opened in Conway
and served as the state’s primary training ground for teachers. With
the vast majority of Arkansas citizens involved in agriculture, the
state also established technical schools at Jonesboro, Magnolia,
Monticello, and Russellville. All four of the schools eventually became
four-year colleges and have evolved into Arkansas State University,
Southern Arkansas University, University of Arkansas at Monticello and
Arkansas Tech University. Advanced educational opportunities for
African-Americans were available at Shorter College in North Little Rock
and Philander Smith and Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock.
Although still segregated from campus, prospective black teachers were
allowed to take courses through State Teachers’ College and the
University of Arkansas. The Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal
College, now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, also provided
African-Americans with educational opportunity.
A lingering problem with Arkansas’s schools was their sheer number,
which stood at over 5,000 districts in 1910. The lack of transportation
required students to walk to school, and even the smallest of
communities had a school. However, most only offered classes through the
eighth grade. A substantial number of the districts held school in
one-room buildings that often served as the community school, church,
and meeting hall. Although dedicated to making the best of the
situation, it was a nearly impossible task for one or two teachers to
adequately teach children as young as 5 and as old as 16 simultaneously.
Although there were over 5,000 school districts, only around 150 had
high schools. With so many small schools dotting the state, the limited
amount of education funding made improving facilities and expanding
curricula nearly impossible. This was especially true in the even more
inadequately funded African-American schools.
In the late 1920s Arkansas began exploring the idea of consolidating
schools as part of an overall reorganization of the public school
system. The Department of Education examined everything from current
facilities, population trends, and even topographic conditions. The
study recommended sweeping consolidation measures that would reduce
school districts to an average of four per county. The resulting plan
also called for set student-to-teacher ratios, a 12-year education
system, and free transportation for students living more than two hours
away from campus. The recommendations were never fully adopted, and only
around 350 consolidated districts were formed. The education system was
showing signs of improvement, and this round of consolidation was a
sign of things to come.
Although the United States as a whole was still experiencing a good
economy as schools were being consolidated, Arkansas’s economy was
already slipping into the depths of depression. In an ironic twist, it
was Great Depression relief programs that would leave Arkansas’s
districts better equipped with school facilities than ever before. New
Deal programs, including the Works Progress Administration and National
Youth Administration, built facilities throughout Arkansas. While most
buildings were built for white students, black schools were not
categorically excluded. School facilities were built in the largest
cities and the smallest communities. Although the New Deal programs
lasted less than a decade, there is no other building program in the
state that has had a greater impact on Arkansas schools. For the first
time, many one-room schools, even in rural areas, were abandoned.
Some assistance for African-American school facilities came from a
philanthropic source, the Julius Rosenwald Fund. Rosenwald was a wealthy
businessman from New York who had made his fortune as the head of the
Chicago-based Sears and Roebuck Company. To ensure that communities
supported a school for black students, the Rosenwald Fund required that
local monetary matches be raised among both white and black citizens in
the community. The Rosenwald fund had a profound effect on black school
facilities in Arkansas. By the time the program was discontinued in
1948, the Rosenwald Fund had aided in the construction of 389
school-related facilities in 45 Arkansas counties.
In 1948 Arkansas underwent the most extensive school reorganization
in state history. A major part of the reorganization was consolidation.
All schools, except for those in isolated regions, that had fewer than
350 students, were forced to consolidate. Farm mechanization and the
resulting urban growth had rendered many rural districts unnecessary.
The children of families who continued to live in rural areas were now
easily served by schools in surrounding towns by buses traveling over an
ever-improving highway system. Most of the schools were given to the
local community or were simply abandoned. Another school reform was
coming that would result in the abandonment of additional schools and
would place Little Rock in the national spotlight.
When the Supreme Court handed down the Brown vs. Board of Education
ruling, which declared school segregation unconstitutional, many schools
in Arkansas closed their doors. Black school facilities that had
suffered from decades of inadequate funding were usually closed in favor
of the white schools. While school desegregation went relatively well
in most schools, Central High School would be a completely different
story.
On September 2, 1957, nine black students were to enroll at Little
Rock’s Central High School. When they arrived at the building, they were
turned away by the Arkansas National Guard, which had been activated by
Governor Orval Faubus to prevent the students’ entry into the school.
The students attempted to enter the school on several occasions
throughout the month, but each time were turned away. A mob of well over
1,000 angry white protesters was growing daily. Finally, on September
24, President Dwight Eisenhower stepped in. By the following day the
students were escorted into the school by over 1,000 members of the
Army’s 101st Airborne Division. The event is remembered today as one of
the milestone events in the Civil Rights movement.
Marshall Academy educated a large population of Ozarks
schoolchildren. The Italianate influence of this school offered a
high-style interpretation at a time when utilitarian architecture was
more common for rural educational structures. (Courtesy of Quapaw Area
Council, BSA)
The Art Deco North Little Rock High School was termed the
“second finest high school in the South,” by the North Little Rock Times
in 1930. The building was constructed to handle the town’s mounting
growth of junior and senior high school enrollment, which necessitated a
larger educational facility by 1929. (Courtesy of American Legion,
Arkansas Department)