The top reported proficiency rate is 25% in Math. The lowest is 15% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Coahoma County Jr/sr High School
Coahoma County Jr/Sr High School sits on Lee Drive in Clarksdale, the county seat of Coahoma County and a town steeped in Mississippi Delta blues history. The school serves grades seven through twelve and operates as part of the Coahoma County School District. It is not a charter school. The enrollment is modest for a combined junior-senior high spanning six grade levels, and the student body is predominantly Black, with small Hispanic and white representation. Every student in the building qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, which reflects the deep economic challenges facing this corner of the Delta.
Clarksdale itself is an agricultural trading and processing center surrounded by cotton, soybean, and rice farmland. Manufacturing has long played a role here, with rubber products, mobile homes, cabinets, farm equipment, and wire produced locally. Since the mid-1990s, blues-related tourism and casinos have become economic drivers, and the downtown along Delta Avenue has seen a modest revival fueled by music venues, festivals, and transplants drawn to the town's cultural heritage. The Delta Blues Museum, housed in a renovated railroad depot, anchors the cultural scene. Still, Clarksdale has experienced long-term population decline, and the housing market tells the story plainly. Home values in the school's zip code sit far below both the Mississippi state benchmark and the national benchmark, and values have been falling. For families looking to buy, housing is quite affordable relative to income. For families concerned about property wealth and long-term appreciation, the trend works against them. The city is car-dependent, with US Highways 49, 61, and a third route providing road access. Memphis International Airport is roughly an hour's drive for those who need it.
On state assessments through the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program, the school's results are low. In seventh-grade math, roughly two-fifths of tested students reached proficiency, the strongest result among the available figures. Eighth-grade math proficiency dropped sharply. English language arts results were lower still, with seventh grade showing about a fifth of students proficient and eighth grade showing only a tenth. Science proficiency in eighth grade landed in a similar low range. These are sobering numbers. A parent considering this school may want to look into what academic support structures and interventions are in place, and how the school plans to address the steep drop between seventh and eighth grade results.
Several data points that would help a parent form a fuller picture are missing. No graduation rate was provided in the data, though the school does serve twelfth grade, so one would expect it to exist. Information on individualized education program rates, English learner counts, course access, staffing levels, attendance, discipline, and specific program offerings was not available. Title I status was not reported, and the school type classification was absent. We looked for the district's recent strategic priorities or parent-relevant changes and found little, so we left it out rather than guess.
What the available picture does show is a school serving a community with concentrated poverty in a region that has been losing population for decades but is working to reinvent itself around cultural tourism and downtown renewal. The academic results as measured by the state are weak across tested subjects and grades. The peer environment is close-knit and nearly entirely African American. Housing is inexpensive to acquire but declining in value. For a family already rooted in Clarksdale, this is the community's combined secondary school, and the question of fit may come down to what the school offers beyond what the test scores capture, which is something the data here cannot fully answer.
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