The top reported proficiency rate is 25% in Science. The lowest is 14% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Shaw High School
Shaw High School sits along Highway 61 North in the small Mississippi Delta town of Shaw, serving grades seven through twelve as part of the West Bolivar Consolidated School District. It is a traditional public school, not a charter or magnet. The school reopened as a standalone institution after a period in which it had merged with McEvans Elementary, and the two became separate again. Publicly reported sources describe Shaw as a predominantly residential Delta community with limited commercial activity, a population that has been declining for decades, and a median household income well below national norms. The town carries a piece of cultural history through its Mississippi Blues Trail marker honoring native son David "Honeyboy" Edwards, but available sources found no major employers, public library, parks, or transit serving the area.
The student body is small for a school spanning six grade levels. Nearly all students are Black or African American, and every student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. Data on special education enrollment, English learner status, staffing, attendance, and discipline was not available in the provided records. The same is true for course access, program offerings, and any Advanced Placement, dual-credit, or career pathway information. A parent looking into what academic electives, extracurriculars, or support services the school provides would need to contact the school directly, because the data we received does not speak to those questions.
What the data does speak to is state assessment performance in the middle grades. On the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program, proficiency rates in seventh and eighth grade math and English language arts were low, with only a fraction of tested students reaching proficient or above. Science results for eighth grade were somewhat stronger by comparison, though still with a minority of students meeting the proficiency bar. No high school end-of-course assessment results, graduation rate, or college-readiness metrics appeared in the records we reviewed. The absence of a graduation rate from the data is worth noting. A school serving grades nine through twelve would typically have one, and a parent may want to ask the school or district for that figure directly. Participation rates for the assessments that were reported came through as missing as well.
The housing market in Shaw's zip code stands well below both the Mississippi state benchmark and the national benchmark for typical home values, and available data shows a sharp year-over-year decline. Rental data was not available. For a family considering a move to the area, this means homeownership costs are low in absolute terms, but the declining values reflect the broader population loss and economic contraction the town has experienced. No major new housing developments or growth projects surfaced in publicly reported sources.
At the district level, the West Bolivar Consolidated School District underwent a facility restructuring in which West Bolivar High School was moved into a former middle school building in Rosedale to create a unified grade-seven-through-twelve campus. That change affects logistics for families in the Rosedale area, though Shaw High School itself operates as its own campus serving the Shaw community. We looked for district-level strategic priorities, academic goals, or program initiatives and found little beyond the facility reorganization, so we left that out rather than guess.
Shaw High School is a small, community-rooted school in a town facing long-term population decline and economic hardship. The academic data available covers only the middle grades and points to low proficiency across math, English language arts, and science. Beyond that, large portions of the picture are missing from available records: high school outcomes, graduation rates, program offerings, staffing ratios, and student support services. A family evaluating this school would benefit from a direct conversation with school leadership about what the upper grades look like day to day, what pathways exist for students after middle school assessments end, and what supports are in place given that every student in the building comes from an economically disadvantaged household.
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