Original Research by School Decision on Mangham High School
Mangham High School is a regular public high school serving grades nine through twelve in the village of Mangham, Louisiana, about an hour east of Monroe in the northeastern part of the state. The school is operated by the Richland Parish School Board and sits on Main Street near the center of this tiny rural crossroads community. Mangham itself straddles the border of Richland and Franklin Parishes, covers roughly one square mile, and has a population that has been declining for several years. The main commercial corridor is Louisiana Highway 15, and the built environment is low-density and car-dependent. The village has no downtown pedestrian district, no public park or library branch that appeared in the available sources, and no public transit. Key local employers include the school system itself and a rural health clinic.
The high school’s enrollment is modest, consistent with the size of the community it serves. By grade the student counts are fairly even through ninth through eleventh grades, with a somewhat smaller twelfth-grade cohort. The student body is predominantly White, with a substantial Black minority and very small shares of Asian, Hispanic, and multiracial students. A meaningful share of families qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the area’s low median household income and above-average poverty rate. The data we reviewed did not include counts of students with disabilities or English learners, so the school’s special-education and language-support resources are not clear from public information.
State test results for Mangham High School were not present in the data available to us. Because Louisiana administers end-of-course assessments in high school subjects and reports school performance scores, the absence of that information is a significant gap. Similarly, the school’s four-year graduation rate was not reported. Without these measures, it is not possible to characterize the school’s academic performance relative to other high schools in Richland Parish or across the state. A parent would want to ask the school or the district office for its most recent state report card, including proficiency levels, graduation rates, and the school performance score that Louisiana assigns to each public school.
The available data also lacks information on course offerings, advanced placement, dual-enrollment opportunities, or career and technical education pathways. No details on teacher qualifications, class sizes, student-to-teacher ratios, or chronic absenteeism were present. Civil-rights indicators such as discipline rates by subgroup and access to rigorous coursework are also missing. The comparison fact-set that positions this school relative to districts in Richland Parish had no applicable metrics because the necessary data was not reported. In short, the public record for Mangham High is thin on the academic and programmatic specifics that families typically rely on to assess a high school.
What is clear is the setting. Mangham is a slowly shrinking rural village, and the high school is an integral part of that small community. The school is one of three campuses in the village, alongside the elementary and junior high schools, all under the same district administration. For a family considering this school, the immediate practical question is obtaining hard data about student achievement and postsecondary preparation. Without that information, a judgment about whether the school is a strong fit for a particular student is difficult to make. The school’s website was not provided in the data we reviewed, so the most direct route would be to contact the Richland Parish School Board or the school office directly.
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