LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — For educators across the state of Arkansas, it's been a long couple of years.
"It's disheartening because we know that we're more than a letter grade," Kasi Davis, principal at Brady Elementary School, said.
Issues that were brought on by the pandemic have been top of mind recently, and now those same issues have found themselves at the top of the report card as well.
"The way we have to instruct, the biggest change has been trying to bring all of our kids back," Kelecia Glover, principal at Mabelvale Elementary School, said. "Cause at the end of the day, if we're at the bottom of the barrel, we have nowhere to go but up."
Officials with the Little Rock School District met on Wednesday to present district scores— which showed that many schools have dropped "letter grades" since 2019.
"Despite how hard our educators worked over the last two years, there should be no surprise that school grades declined in LRSD from 2019 to 2022," Superintendent of LRSD, Dr. Jermall Wright, said.
Multiple districts have regressed since the last time they were graded.
According to Arkansas Department of Education data, districts of all sizes saw lower scores, which have served as a reminder of pandemic struggles.
Though Dr. Wright explained that he isn't worried— he's confident.
"What other attitude is there to have?" he said. "I mean, it's no reason to feel defeated. This is our current reality, but it doesn't have to be our reality three or four years from now."
He added that there's no clear starting point for getting schools back on track, which may actually prove to be a good thing. It can allow them to focus on many issues at once.
"It doesn't define our students, it doesn't define our community. We have a lot of work to do, I think we've already acknowledged that" Dr. Wright said. "We know there are parts of our system that does not work well, and we have to do things differently in order to improve in those areas."
While this is a problem that every district has been looking at, they're ready to get to work.
It may take a while— but there's nowhere to go but up.
"The difficulty is not what we try to keep at the forefront, but teaching and learning and moving forward," Davis explained.