Mount Olive Attendance Center, Mount Olive MS

Original Research by School Decision on Mount Olive Attendance Center

Mount Olive Attendance Center is a single school serving kindergarten through twelfth grade in the small town of Mount Olive, Mississippi, part of the Covington County School District. The arrangement means children can stay in one school community from their first day of elementary school through high school graduation, which is unusual and gives the place a continuity that many larger, grade-stratified districts cannot match. The enrollment is small, with each grade level holding roughly two dozen students or fewer, so class sizes are intimate and students are likely known by name across the building.

The student body is predominantly Black, with a sizable white minority and a small number of students identifying as Asian or multiracial. Every student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, which reflects the economic conditions of the surrounding community rather than anything about the school itself. Data on special education enrollment and English learner status was not available, so those portions of the student profile remain unclear.

State testing results from the most recent year show a mixed picture. In math, proficiency rises notably from the early elementary grades into the middle grades, with sixth and seventh grade reaching relatively strong levels before dipping again in eighth grade. Third grade math proficiency is quite low. English language arts results hover in a moderate-to-low range across all tested grades, with no single grade standing out as a clear bright spot. Science proficiency, tested in fifth and eighth grades, lands in a middling range. Because each tested grade has a small number of students, a handful of children scoring above or below proficiency can shift the picture meaningfully, so these results should be read with that context in mind. A parent may want to ask the school how it supports students in the earliest tested grades, where math proficiency is lowest, and how it sustains the stronger middle-grade results into high school.

No graduation rate, Advanced Placement data, dual-credit information, career pathway listings, or program offerings were available in the data provided, so the academic picture beyond state testing in grades three through eight is limited. Staffing, discipline, attendance, and course-access data were also absent, which leaves gaps in understanding the school's day-to-day environment and supports.

The town of Mount Olive sits in Covington County along U.S. Route 49, roughly equidistant between Jackson to the northwest and Hattiesburg to the southeast. Publicly reported sources describe it as one of the nation's first planned communities, laid out with a wide boulevard lined with oak trees leading into a downtown business district along Main Street. The town has historical roots in agriculture and lumber. Its population has been declining gradually over recent census cycles, and median household income is low with a substantial share of residents living below the poverty line. A local civic group called City Beautiful is working to promote economic and community development, though no major new housing projects were identified. The town has no identified public transit system, and no parks or library were found in the available sources, though Okatoma Creek runs through the valley nearby.

Housing in the Mount Olive zip code is quite affordable compared with both state and national benchmarks. Typical home values sit well below the statewide figure and far below the national one, and the price-to-income ratio remains low, suggesting that buying a home here is financially accessible for working families who earn a local wage. Home values have been appreciating modestly, and estimated monthly mortgage costs remain below typical rent burdens, which means ownership may be the more economical path for families settling in the area.

The Covington County School District, which operates the school, was released from federal desegregation oversight in 2021 and granted unitary status, giving the district full control over attendance zones, staffing, and school assignment. This change affects how resources and students are distributed across the district's three communities of Collins, Mount Olive, and Seminary, and families may want to understand how those decisions are made going forward.

What Mount Olive Attendance Center offers is a small, continuous kindergarten-through-twelfth-grade environment in an affordable, rural community with deep local roots. The academic results are uneven, with real strength in the middle-grade math years and persistent challenges in the early elementary grades and across English language arts. Families looking for a close-knit school where their child can grow up alongside the same peers would find that here, but they should come prepared to ask questions about academic support, high school programming, and what the upper grades look like, since the available data does not answer those questions.

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Academic performance

State test results and graduation outcomes.

Graduation rate (ACGR)

80-89%Cohort of 35 students · Class of 2021

The federal source publishes a banded range instead of an exact rate when the graduating cohort is small enough that an exact number could risk identifying individual students.

How this school compares to all schools in this state

Each dot is one school’s SY 2020-21 graduation rate, binned by integer rate. Taller columns mean more schools at that rate. This school is highlighted.

241 schools plotted. 29 additional schools' rates are federally suppressed and not shown. Data: EDFacts SY 2020-21.

Math

Grade 314%

School 14% · District 53% · ▼ 39 pts below district

▼ 36 pts below state median

Grade 429%

School 29% · District 50% · ▼ 21 pts below district

▼ 22 pts below state median

Grade 539%

School 39% · District 42% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▼ 3 pts below state median

Grade 660%

School 60% · District 61%

▲ 9 pts above state median

Grade 757%

School 57% · District 49% · ▲ 8 pts above district

▲ 5 pts above state median

Grade 842%

School 42% · District 46% · ▼ 5 pts below district

▼ 2 pts below state median

English language arts

Grade 341%

School 41% · District 51% · ▼ 10 pts below district

▼ 7 pts below state median

Grade 429%

School 29% · District 52% · ▼ 23 pts below district

▼ 20 pts below state median

Grade 522%

School 22% · District 53% · ▼ 30 pts below district

▼ 29 pts below state median

Grade 640%

School 40% · District 51% · ▼ 11 pts below district

▼ 2 pts below state median

Grade 729%

School 29% · District 35% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▼ 3 pts below state median

Grade 833%

School 33% · District 33% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 3 pts below state median

Science

Grade 539%

School 39% · District 69% · ▼ 30 pts below district

▼ 26 pts below state median

Grade 838%

School 38% · District 51% · ▼ 13 pts below district

▼ 16 pts below state median

This schoolCOVINGTON COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.