The top reported proficiency rate is 25% in English language arts. The lowest is 23% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Charleston Elementary School
Charleston Elementary School sits in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, in a small town that calls itself the "Gateway to the Delta." Charleston is one of two county seats in Tallahatchie County, and its civic life centers on a brick courthouse, churches, and the schools that share the town fabric. The town has been losing population over recent census cycles, and no major housing developments or growth initiatives surfaced in publicly reported sources. The local economy leans on health care, educational services, and manufacturing, with no dominant employer names identified. For a family considering this school, the setting is a quiet, auto-oriented Delta community where distances are short and institutions are tightly woven into the town.
The school serves pre-kindergarten through fourth grade and is part of the East Tallahatchie Consolidated School District. Enrollment is modest for its grade band. The student body is predominantly Black, with a smaller white population and a handful of multiracial students. Every student in the building qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, which places this school firmly in the category of high-poverty education. That fact shapes the resource conversation but does not by itself define what happens in classrooms. Data on special education enrollment, English learner counts, and staffing levels was not available, so those dimensions of student support cannot be characterized here.
State testing results from the 2024-25 school year are available for third and fourth grade, the two tested grades at this school, using Mississippi's MAAP assessment. In math, roughly a quarter of third graders reached proficiency or above, and the fourth-grade rate was somewhat lower. In English language arts, the pattern was similar, with about a quarter of third graders proficient and the fourth-grade rate just below that. These are low proficiency rates by any standard, and a parent may want to look into this further with the school to understand what instructional supports and interventions are in place. The school does not have prior-year results available for comparison, so there is no way to read whether performance is moving in a particular direction. No participation rates were reported either, which limits what the test results can tell us about the full student body.
Because the school ends at fourth grade, there is no graduation rate to report and no higher-grade course access such as AP or dual-credit pathways to describe. Those measures simply do not apply to an elementary school serving this grade range. Similarly, no civil-rights data on discipline, chronic absenteeism, or course access was provided, and the school's Title I status was not reported in the available data.
The housing market around Charleston is among the most affordable in the state. Home values in the school's zip code sit well below both the Mississippi state benchmark and the national average, and recent values have declined modestly year over year. Rental data was not available. For families already in the area or those drawn by low housing costs, the financial barrier to living in the Charleston attendance zone is minimal. The trade-off is a community with a shrinking population and limited publicly visible development activity.
We looked for recent district-level changes that might matter to parents, such as curriculum shifts, referendums, or facility investments, and found none reported. That does not mean nothing is happening, only that the available sources did not surface it. A family with specific questions about district priorities would need to go directly to East Tallahatchie Consolidated School District for current information.
What the evidence shows is a small, early-grades elementary school in a declining Delta county seat, serving an almost entirely low-income student population, with state test results that indicate most tested students are not yet reaching proficiency in math or reading. The community is affordable and compact, with civic institutions close at hand. The academic picture is the area where a parent would want to ask the most questions, and the school is the place to ask them.
See more original research from School Decision →