The top reported proficiency rate is 50% in Science. The lowest is 28% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Goodman Pickens Elementary School
Goodman-Pickens Elementary School sits along Highway 51 between the towns of Goodman and Pickens in southeastern Holmes County, Mississippi. It is a public elementary school serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade as part of the Holmes County Consolidated School District. The school is not a charter or magnet school. Its enrollment is small for its grade band, and every student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is almost entirely Black or African American, with only a handful of students from other racial backgrounds.
The town of Goodman itself is a very small rural crossroads community shaped heavily by the presence of Holmes Community College, whose campus sits in town and serves as the dominant local institution. Publicly reported sources describe an economy that employs very few people locally, with the largest sectors being retail trade and finance and insurance. The median household income is extremely low, and the poverty rate is high. The town has been in population decline for years, with no major housing developments or growth initiatives on record. U.S. Route 51 runs through the center of town, and Mississippi Highway 14 crosses it nearby. Interstate 55 is accessible a short drive west, connecting south to Jackson and north to Memphis. Most residents drive alone to work. The broader picture is a community with limited local employment, low homeownership, and a trajectory of contraction rather than growth.
Housing in the school's zip code is very affordable compared with state and national benchmarks. Typical home values sit well below the Mississippi state average and far below the national average. Estimated monthly mortgage costs are modest, and the price-to-income ratio relative to the national figure suggests that homeownership is within reach for those with stable income, though the local economic context means that stable income is itself a challenge for many families.
On state assessments, Goodman-Pickens shows mixed results across subjects and grade levels. In mathematics, the share of students scoring proficient or above sits below the midpoint you would want to see, with third grade performing slightly better than fourth and fifth. English language arts proficiency follows a similar pattern, with fourth grade the lowest across both subjects. Science results for fifth grade stand out as a relative bright spot, with half of tested students reaching proficiency. This is the strongest result in the school's available data. Participation rates for state assessments were not reported, so it is difficult to assess how completely the tested students represent the full enrollment. A parent may want to ask the school about participation and about what interventions are in place for reading and mathematics, since those are the areas where proficiency lags most.
The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report. This is expected for an elementary school and does not reflect a gap. Some data fields that would help round out the picture were not available. We looked for information on English learners, special education enrollment, discipline, course access, staffing, and attendance, but the payload did not include them. Title I status was also not reported, though the universal free or reduced-price lunch rate suggests the school likely serves a high-poverty population. IEP and English learner counts were missing as well. We also looked for multi-year trend data to see whether proficiency has been improving or declining over time, but no comparable prior-year results were available, so we left that out rather than guess. The district brief turned up no recent parent-relevant changes such as curriculum overhauls, rezoning, or tax shifts. A past consolidation of Holmes County and Durant districts was noted but predates the recent window of parent-relevant change.
For a family considering this school, the context is a tight-knit rural community with deep institutional roots in its community college and a school serving a uniformly high-poverty student population. The science results suggest the school can move students to proficiency when instruction clicks. Reading and mathematics are softer, and those are the areas a parent would want to understand better before enrolling. The housing market is very affordable, but the local economy offers limited employment, meaning many families likely commute elsewhere for work. This is a school in a small, economically challenged community where the relationship between school staff and families may matter more than any single metric.
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