Arcola Elementary, built in 1880, first began as a one-room school located on Evergreen Mills Road. Although a house now stands where the original one-room school existed, the water pump used by the first students still exists. The school consisted of grades one through seven. The school closed in 1908 and the building was used briefly as a post office before becoming the Barton-Pearson Store. The structure was destroyed in the late 1970s to make way for a new house. The second school was built, also a one-room schoolhouse, with a front porch and the date 1910 inscribed over the door. It stood on Evergreen Mills Road until 1939 when it was torn down and replaced by a house.

In 1939 a new brick school was constructed with four classrooms on Gum Spring Road in Arcola. The new school was a combination of four schools. Three of them were one-room schoolhouses: McGraw's Ridge, Arcola, and Carter. The fourth school, Pleasant Valley, was a two-room schoolhouse. Arcola Elementary was the only school in Loudoun County constructed under the Public Works Administration established during Franklin Roosevelt's term. Additional rooms were added in 1950 and 1956.

A new school constructed with twenty rooms on Goshen Road opened in 1975. The 1939 building on Gum Spring Road is now used as a community center.