The top reported proficiency rate is 19% in English language arts. The lowest is 10% in Social studies.
Original Research by School Decision on Ferriday Upper Elementary School
Ferriday Upper Elementary School serves the third through fifth grades in Ferriday, Louisiana, within the Concordia Parish school system. The school is a regular public, non-charter elementary serving just over two hundred students across three grade levels. The student body is predominantly African-American, with a smaller share of white students and a handful of Hispanic and multiracial students. A substantial majority of students come from families with low incomes, as measured by the free and reduced-price lunch program.
State testing results from the LEAP 2025 assessments show that majorities of Ferriday Upper Elementary students scored below the proficient threshold in all four tested subjects. The highest proficiency rate was in English language arts, where roughly one in five students met the proficient or advanced bar. In math, the rate was slightly lower, around one in six. Science and social studies proficiency rates were lower still, with roughly one in ten students scoring proficient. Across all subjects tested, the school’s proficiency rates were below the state average, a pattern that a parent considering the school will want to understand in more detail. The school has one year of assessment data available; participation rates for state testing were near complete in all subjects.
The school is located in Ferriday, a small town in Concordia Parish along the Mississippi River in northeastern Louisiana. The town has experienced long-term population decline, linked to the loss of its historic agricultural, timber, and railroad economic base. The timber industry faded in the 1970s, and the railroad was abandoned in the early 1980s. The town is now pursuing cultural heritage tourism, centered on its Delta Music Museum and the restored Arcade Theater, both on Louisiana Avenue. The surrounding area is known for recreational bass fishing on nearby oxbow lakes. Housing values in the immediate Ferriday area are well below the Louisiana state median and far below the national median, and the local housing market has recently seen year-over-year price declines. The town’s population is dropping, and no major new residential development has been publicly reported.
Because Ferriday Upper Elementary is a standalone upper elementary school serving only grades three through five, it does not report a graduation rate, and data on its special education enrollment, English learner population, chronic absenteeism, and discipline were not available in this data. The district-level context is similarly limited for these specific school-level measures. The school’s enrollment is small for a public elementary school, and it serves a single age band, which means students will transition to a middle or high school within Concordia Parish after fifth grade.
Ferriday Upper Elementary is one of two schools in its grade band within Concordia Parish, and the county contains only a small number of districts overall. The data set used for comparison was based on the school’s county rather than a wider region, so any relative positioning is limited to the immediate parish context. No comparative proficiency index or graduation rate was available for this school within that cohort, as the cohort was too small to produce a comparison.
The school and its community present a picture of a rural elementary school serving a high-poverty student population in a town that has lost its historic economic drivers and is looking to reinvent itself through tourism. Academic outcomes on state assessments are well below state averages across every tested subject, a fact that a family considering this school will want to discuss directly with the school leadership to understand the current instructional programming and any improvement initiatives underway. The town offers a low-cost housing market and a compact, walkable downtown anchored by music history attractions, but its population is shrinking and local employment opportunities are limited. The school does not appear to have reported the kinds of program offerings, such as gifted and talented or specialized pathways, that are often listed at larger or more affluent schools; if those matter to a family, the school would be the place to ask.
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