The reported proficiency rate for English language arts is 70%.
Original Research by School Decision on Pemiscot Co. R-iii Elem.
Pemiscot County R-III Elementary serves students from prekindergarten through eighth grade in a single building on a county highway outside Caruthersville, the county seat of Pemiscot County in Missouri’s far southeastern Bootheel. The school is part of the Pemiscot County R-III district, which also operates a high school. The enrollment is small for the PK–8 grade span, and the student body is overwhelmingly white. A very large share of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, indicating that most families face economic challenges.
State testing data for the 2024–25 school year is largely suppressed, which is standard practice when the number of students tested in a grade-level group is too small to report publicly while protecting individual privacy. Reported testing counts confirm small cohorts in each grade, ranging from a handful of students in fourth grade to the low twenties in seventh grade. The only proficiency rate that could be reported was for seventh-grade English language arts, where a majority of tested students scored at or above proficient. For all other tested subjects and grade levels – math, English language arts, and science in grades three through eight – the state suppressed the results. A parent looking for a broader academic picture may want to discuss classroom-level progress directly with the school, since the public data offers little to go on.
Because the school stops at eighth grade, there is no graduation rate to report here. Students move on to Pemiscot County R-III High School after completing this building. The district itself, like the town, appears to have had no major publicly reported changes or initiatives in recent years that would reshape a family’s experience.
Caruthersville is a small Mississippi River town whose economy revolves around agriculture – rice, soybeans, and cotton are major crops shipped by barge – plus a riverboat casino that provides tourism revenue. The population has been declining over the past several years, and housing values are low relative to state and national benchmarks. The median home value in the ZIP code covering the school is well below the state median, and year-over-year values have fallen. A modest monthly mortgage payment would be quite low by national standards, but the area’s poverty rate is high and median household income is low, so affordability is relative. Most workers have a short commute, and employment is local, centered on farming, transport, healthcare, and retail.
The school sits on a county highway on the outskirts of Caruthersville rather than in the town’s Ward Avenue downtown area. The town itself offers a traditional main street, a riverfront, a county courthouse, and a historic water tower listed on the National Register, but limited walkability and few documented amenities beyond those anchors.
Pemiscot County R-III Elementary is a school where economic disadvantage is the norm among the student body, class sizes are small, and the public record on academic performance is thin due to suppression of results. The school’s overall proficiency index across all tested subjects and grades, calculated from the one reported rate and treated as zero for suppressed groups, places it at the top among the seven districts in Pemiscot County for which the index could be computed. That top position reflects the limited data available rather than a full picture, and a parent should weigh it accordingly. This is a school for a family that values a small, rural setting where the building covers a long grade span from early childhood through middle school, and where the community’s economic realities are directly reflected in the student population.
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