The top reported proficiency rate is 25% in Science. The lowest is 23% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Pecan Park Elementary School
Pecan Park Elementary sits on Claiborne Avenue in west Jackson, serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade as part of Jackson Public School District. It is a traditional public school without charter or magnet designation, drawing from a community where housing values sit well below the state and national norms. The immediate area's home values are a small fraction of what typical Mississippi homes command, and a smaller fraction still of national figures. That places Pecan Park in one of the more affordable corners of an already affordable metropolitan area, which shapes both the student body and the resources the school works with.
Every student at Pecan Park qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. The enrollment is modest for an elementary school, with students distributed fairly evenly across the grade levels. The student body is predominantly Black, with a substantial Hispanic presence and a very small share identifying as two or more races. No white, Asian, American Indian, or Pacific Islander students were reported. Data on English learners and students with individualized education programs was not available, so those populations cannot be characterized here.
On state assessments administered under Mississippi's MAAP, Pecan Park's results show a clear pattern. In math, a modest share of third and fourth graders reached proficient or above, but fifth-grade math proficiency fell sharply. English language arts results were lower across all three tested grades, with a smaller portion of students meeting the proficiency bar, edging downward from third through fifth grade. Fifth-grade science landed in between, with a modest share reaching proficiency. Participation rate data was not reported. A parent may want to look into the decline in math performance between fourth and fifth grade, and into literacy support across all tested grades, with the school directly. The school's multi-year trend data was not available, so it is not possible to say whether this year's results represent a change from prior years.
Jackson itself frames much of what surrounds Pecan Park. The city is Mississippi's capital and largest municipality, anchored by state government, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson State University, and a Nissan manufacturing plant. Publicly reported sources describe a city that has experienced substantial population decline over the past decade, the steepest of any major American city during that period. Development pressure has shifted toward suburban Madison and Rankin counties, where employers like Amazon have established operations. The city has also faced serious infrastructure challenges, including a widely reported water crisis. These broader conditions affect the tax base and community stability that schools like Pecan Park depend on.
Jackson Public School District recently adopted a strategic plan covering the next several years, which is publicly reported to set district-wide goals around curriculum, instruction, and resource allocation. How that plan translates into changes at the building level for Pecan Park remains to be seen. No information was available on specific programs, course access, staffing ratios, discipline data, attendance patterns, or Title I status for this school. These gaps mean the picture here is built largely from assessment results, enrollment, and the surrounding community context.
What Pecan Park offers is a small, community-rooted elementary school in an area where housing costs are very low and where the district is actively working through a planning process. The academic results are mixed, with stronger showings in early-grade math but real challenges in literacy and in fifth-grade math. Families considering this school would benefit from asking how the district's new strategic priorities will reach this building, what support structures exist for literacy growth, and what the fifth-grade math trajectory reflects. The school's full free-lunch population and the economic conditions of the surrounding neighborhood mean Pecan Park is working with students under concentrated resource constraints, and understanding how the school addresses that reality is a reasonable next step for any parent.
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