The Ashdown Junior High School has been recognized by the Office for Education Policy (OEP) at the University of Arkansas as a school where students demonstrated high growth on the ACT Aspire! The OEP creates an annual report entitled the Outstanding Educational Performance Awards where schools are recognized for high student academic growth.

AJHS received the following awards:

High Overall Growth: Middle Level (Southwest Region)

High Math Growth: Middle Level (Southwest Region)

High ELA Growth: Middle Level (Southwest Region)

Mr. James K. Jones, AJHS Principal says, “The teachers and staff are committed to student academic success as well as making AJHS a place where students expect to succeed and do so. Our improved growth in student test scores for the last several years indicate that we have excellent teachers in English/Language Arts, Math and other key core subjects who work together as a team.”

Awards are based on the 2019 content growth score calculated by the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education. These growth scores reflect how much students at the school improved from 2018 compared to how much they were expected to grow considering prior achievement.

Ashdown Public School Superintendent Casey Nichols said, “We are extremely excited about the direction our campuses are going and we could not be more proud of the awards AJHS has received and for all of the hard work and commitment that our students and staff have put forward to making this positive growth happen."