The top reported proficiency rate is 64% in Science. The lowest is 26% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Stern Elementary School
Stern Elementary School sits on McAllister Street in Greenville, the county seat of Washington County and the largest city in the Mississippi Delta. It is part of the Greenville Public School District and serves grades one through five, a small neighborhood elementary with an enrollment modest for its grade band. The student body is nearly entirely Black, with all students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. The school is not a charter and has no magnet designation.
State assessment results from the most recent year are available and tell a mixed story. In math, proficiency rises steadily across the tested grades. Third grade posts the lowest rate, fourth grade moves up, and fifth grade reaches the strongest mark in the school. The same pattern holds in English language arts, where fifth grade again shows the best results while third and fourth grade sit lower. Science is tested only in fifth grade at this level, and here Stern stands out: a solid majority of fifth graders scored proficient or above, the highest result across all subjects and grades the school reports. That fifth grade science figure is genuinely strong and suggests the upper elementary cohort is connecting with the subject.
The broader picture, though, is that math and ELA proficiency rates across third and fourth grade sit well below where a school would want them. These are the grades where foundational reading and number skills are being built, and the data shows many students are not yet meeting the state's proficient bar. A parent considering Stern for a younger child may want to look into how the school supports early literacy and numeracy, and what intervention or tutoring structures are in place. The upward trend from third to fifth in both math and ELA is encouraging, since it suggests growth as students move through the building, but the starting point is low.
Greenville itself is a city shaped by its location on the eastern bank of Lake Ferguson, an oxbow lake formed from a former Mississippi River channel. The downtown commercial core runs along Main Street, with residential neighborhoods spreading out from there. The city has a deep history as a cotton trading and cultural center for surrounding plantations, and it still carries that Delta identity. Nelson Street was once a vibrant strip of blues clubs in the 1940s and 1950s, comparable to Beale Street in Memphis, and a Mississippi Blues Trail marker now stands there. Today Greenville retains some agricultural service economy alongside two riverboat casinos, Trop Casino Greenville near downtown and Harlow's Casino Resort near the Greenville Bridge. The city fire department is described publicly as the largest in the Mississippi Delta, and the school district is also a major employer. The built environment is predominantly car-oriented, with US Highways 61 and 82 and the Great River Road as the main transportation arteries.
The city has experienced population decline over recent decades, consistent with broader Mississippi Delta trends. A major cable-stayed Greenville Bridge crossing the Mississippi River into Arkansas replaced the older two-lane span, and a US Highway 82 bypass was under construction to improve regional connectivity. The Greenville Higher Education Center offers credit courses from Delta State University, Mississippi Delta Community College, and Mississippi Valley State University, giving the city a modest higher education presence.
Housing in the 38701 zip code is very affordable compared with state and national benchmarks. The typical home value sits far below both the Mississippi state figure and the national figure, and estimated monthly mortgage costs are low relative to national norms. Recent year-over-year home values showed a sharp decline, which reflects the broader economic pressures the area faces rather than a single housing market event. No rental data was available for this zip code.
Data on IEP and English learner populations was not reported, so it is not possible to characterize the share of students receiving special education or language support services. Discipline, course access, staffing, and attendance data were also not available. We looked for the district's strategic priorities or recent policy changes and found little publicly reported beyond descriptive enrollment and revenue information, so we left that out rather than guess. No graduation rate applies here, since Stern is an elementary school serving only grades one through five.
Stern fits a family looking for a small, community-rooted elementary school in a historic Delta city with very low housing costs. The fifth grade science results and the grade-to-grade growth in math and ELA are real bright spots. The lower proficiency rates in the early grades are equally real, and a parent weighing this school should ask directly what the campus is doing to build those foundations.
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