The top reported proficiency rate is 43% in Science. The lowest is 25% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Belle Shivers Middle School
Belle Shivers Middle School sits on West Vine Street in Aberdeen, the county seat of Monroe County, Mississippi, and serves grades five through eight as part of the Aberdeen School District. The school draws from a town with a deep historic character. Aberdeen's downtown centers on Commerce Street, where City Hall, county courts, and federal courts cluster among antebellum homes and tree-lined streets. The Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway runs through the area, and the town's port and hospital are among its largest employers. Publicly reported sources describe a population in long-term decline, with the town positioning itself as an affordable retirement destination rather than a place experiencing growth. New housing development was not identified in available research, so the residential market around the school is one of stability and contraction rather than expansion.
Home values in the school's zip code sit well below both the Mississippi and national benchmarks, and the price-to-income ratio is modest. For a family looking at the area, that means housing is relatively accessible, though the broader economic trajectory of the community is one of limited expansion. The town's compact historic core offers some walkability, but pedestrian infrastructure data was not available, and U.S. Highway 45 passes along the south and west as a bypass rather than through a dense urban grid.
The student body at Belle Shivers is small for its grade band, and every enrolled student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. The school serves an almost entirely Black student population, with only a handful of students identifying as white or multiracial. Data on English learners and students with individualized education programs was not reported, so those populations cannot be characterized here. The school is not a charter school; magnet status and Title I status were not specified in the available data.
On Mississippi's MAAP assessments for the most recent school year, the school's results paint a mixed and grade-dependent picture. Math performance rises sharply in the middle grades. Sixth-grade proficiency reaches a solid level, and seventh-grade math proficiency is the school's strongest result, with a clear majority of tested students scoring proficient or above. Fifth-grade math, by contrast, is quite low, and eighth-grade math drops back considerably from the seventh-grade peak. This pattern suggests something is working well in the sixth and seventh grades that does not carry consistently into the entry and exit points of the school.
English language arts results are consistently modest across all four grades, hovering in a narrow band from the upper teens to the low thirties in proficiency. No grade breaks above that range, and the seventh and eighth grades sit at the lower end. Science, tested only in fifth and eighth grades, shows stronger results, with proficiency at a moderate level in both grades. Participation rates were not reported for any subject or grade, so it is not possible to confirm how completely the tested students represent the full enrollment.
No multi-year trend data was available, so the current year's results stand alone without context about whether the school is improving or declining over time. A parent may want to look into this further with the school, particularly the uneven math pattern and the flat ELA results, to understand what supports are in place and how the district is responding.
The Aberdeen School District was publicly identified for Targeted Support and Improvement by the Mississippi Department of Education, a designation that brings state-level intervention aimed at raising academic performance. At the same time, the district's graduation rate has improved over five years, and per-student spending and revenue have grown. Those district-level signals matter because Belle Shivers feeds into the district's high school, and the current improvement trajectory there could shape what happens to students after they leave eighth grade.
Because this is a middle school serving grades five through eight, there is no graduation rate, no AP or dual-credit course access, and no college-readiness metric to report. Data on discipline, staffing ratios, attendance, and civil-rights topics was not available, and no program offerings or neighbor comparison set was provided. Where this school fits for a family depends heavily on how a child responds to the environment it offers: a small, close-knit middle school in an affordable, historic small town, with real strength in sixth and seventh grade math but consistent challenges in reading that a parent would want to understand before enrolling.
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