The top reported proficiency rate is 59% in Science. The lowest is 35% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Higgins Middle School
Higgins Middle School sits on Elmwood Street in McComb, a small city in Pike County, Mississippi, and serves students in grades four through six. It is part of the McComb School District, a traditional public district. The school's enrollment is modest for its grade band, with students distributed fairly evenly across the three grades plus a small ungraded group. The student body is predominantly Black, with small Hispanic, white, and multiracial populations also represented. Every student in the building qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, which reflects the economic conditions of the surrounding community rather than anything about the school itself.
McComb grew up as a railroad town, founded when the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad moved its maintenance shops here, and that heritage still shapes the city's identity. The downtown runs along Main Street, with City Hall anchoring civic life. An Amtrak station on the City of New Orleans line connects McComb to the broader region. The McComb Main Street Association supports ongoing downtown activity, and the city hosts annual events including an Earth Day Fest organized by Pike School of Art, the Summit Street Unity Festival, and Juneteenth celebrations at the Black History Gallery. Southwest Mississippi Community College sits a short drive north near Summit, serving as a regional educational anchor. A private college-preparatory school, Parklane Academy, also operates in the central part of the city, giving families an alternative within the same community.
The housing market around Higgins tells a clear story. Home values in the school's zip code sit well below both the Mississippi state benchmark and the national figure, and they have declined over the past year. The price-to-income ratio sits below the national average, suggesting that homeownership is relatively attainable for those with stable income, though the declining values may reflect broader economic pressures in the area. Rental data was not available, so a complete picture of the rental market is not possible from what we have.
On state assessments, Higgins shows a mixed academic profile. In math, a little over half of sixth graders reached proficiency, with fifth graders somewhat below that. English language arts results run lower, with the fifth grade proficiency rate below a third of tested students and the sixth grade somewhat higher but still under half. Science stands out as the school's strongest subject, with a solid majority of fifth graders reaching proficiency. Across both math and ELA, sixth grade results were stronger than fifth grade, which could suggest growth as students move through the building, though without multi-year trend data, that observation is tentative. A parent looking at ELA results in particular may want to ask the school how reading instruction and intervention are structured across grades four and five.
Several data categories were missing or not applicable. Because Higgins serves only grades four through six, there is no graduation rate to report; that measure applies to high schools. No civil-rights data, course-access information, staffing figures, attendance data, or discipline records were available in what we received. Individualized education program and English learner counts were also missing. No program offerings were listed, so we cannot speak to extracurriculars, arts, or advanced coursework. We looked for recent district-level changes that might affect families, such as curriculum shifts or facility investments, and found nothing on record. Participation rates for the state assessments were listed as missing as well, though the tested counts themselves were reported.
What the available picture suggests is a small middle school in an affordable, historically rooted community, with real strength in science, moderate results in math, and English language arts as the area most in need of attention. Families considering Higgins would benefit from asking directly about reading support, available programs, and how the school serves students with specialized needs, since those details did not appear in the data we reviewed.
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