Overview

Little Rock Central High School, founded in 1927, is a comprehensive public high school in the Little Rock School District and a U.S. National Historic Landmark, best known as the site of the 1957 desegregation crisis. It's now a National Historic Site as well as an operating high school, and offers several magnet/career-focus programs including International Studies and Environmental Science.

Academics

No independently verified Arkansas state assessment proficiency data was located for this profile; check the Arkansas Department of Education's School Report Card system directly for current figures.

Neighborhood

The school sits in Little Rock, Arkansas's capital and most populous city, in Pulaski County. It's an 18-acre campus in a historic district recognized on the National Register of Historic Places.

Crime & safety

Unlike Phoenix (profiled elsewhere in this directory), Little Rock's crime data is unusually consistent across sources: multiple independent providers agree the city's overall and violent crime rates are substantially above both the Arkansas state average and the national average, with one FBI-UCR-based source ranking it in the 9th percentile for violent-crime safety nationally and another describing it as among the highest-violent-crime-rate cities in the country. One source specifically notes that safety varies sharply by area within the city -- citing west Little Rock as considerably safer than the city's east side.

Every source checked for this profile agrees Little Rock's crime rate is meaningfully above average -- a rare case of strong cross-source consensus in this directory so far. That consistency itself is worth noting: it makes the elevated-risk conclusion more reliable than the more contested figures seen for cities like Phoenix.

Our calculated rating

We don't publish a single proprietary score. Based on the 1 of 3 possible components we could source for this school (safety -- consistently elevated risk across sources), we're not showing a partial numeric rating, since 1 of 3 components alone would overstate precision. See our ratings methodology.

Sources

  1. Wikipedia, "Little Rock Central High School," cross-checked against NCES ID 050900000607.
  2. NCES Common Core of Data, School Search -- Central High School, 2024-25 school year.
  3. Nextdoor Neighbors resource page, Little Rock crime and safety, citing FBI-derived data, 2026.
  4. CrimeGrade.org, Little Rock violent-crime analysis, 2025.
  5. NeighborhoodScout, Little Rock crime data, citing FBI crime data, 2026.
  6. Reolink.com safety guide, Little Rock, 2026 (west vs. east Little Rock variation).