The top reported proficiency rate is 29% in Math. The lowest is 20% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Denman Junior High School
Denman Junior High School sits on Louisiana Avenue in McComb, a small city in Pike County, Mississippi, and serves seventh and eighth graders as part of the McComb School District. It is a traditional public school, not a charter or magnet, and every student enrolled qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is predominantly Black, with small numbers of white, Hispanic, multiracial, and Asian students. The enrollment is modest for a two-grade junior high, with a somewhat larger seventh-grade cohort than eighth.
McComb itself carries a particular history. Publicly reported sources describe it as a railroad town, founded when the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad relocated its maintenance shops there. The downtown centers on Main Street, with City Hall nearby and an active Main Street Association working on preservation. An Amtrak station on the City of New Orleans line still serves the city. Civic life includes an Earth Day festival organized by Pike School of Art, a Summit Street Unity Festival in the fall, and Juneteenth celebrations at the Black History Gallery. Southwest Mississippi Community College sits a short drive north near Summit, and Parklane Academy, a private college-preparatory school covering kindergarten through twelfth grade, operates in the central part of the city.
State assessment results from the most recent school year paint a mixed and in some areas concerning picture. In seventh-grade math, roughly half of tested students reached proficiency, a result that stands as the school's strongest. By eighth grade, that math proficiency drops sharply to a very low level. English language arts results are low in both grades, with the eighth-grade figure lower than the seventh. Eighth-grade science proficiency is also low. The steep decline in math between seventh and eighth grade is the most pronounced pattern in the data. Participation rates were not available, and no multi-year trend data was provided, so it is hard to say whether these results reflect a recent shift or a longer-standing pattern. A parent may want to look into this further with the school, particularly the eighth-grade math drop, to understand what is driving it and what interventions are in place.
Because Denman serves only seventh and eighth grades, it has no graduation rate, no AP or dual-credit coursework, and no college-readiness metrics. Those measures belong to high schools. The data also does not include discipline records, course-access details, staffing ratios, attendance figures, or Title I status, so those dimensions of school life could not be assessed here. English learner and special education enrollment figures were not reported in the data provided.
The housing market around Denman tells its own story. Home values in the school's zip code are far below both the Mississippi state benchmark and the national benchmark, and they have been declining. For families already in the area, this means homeownership is comparatively accessible. For families considering a move, it reflects a community where housing costs are low but property values have not been appreciating. Rental data was not available. The broader economic context includes a national unemployment rate that has held steady, and mortgage rates that have been easing somewhat in recent months but remain elevated by historical standards.
The district brief turned up no parent-relevant changes such as curriculum shifts, facility projects, or tax measures in the recent past. This means the account here rests on what the current data shows rather than any known transition underway.
Denman Junior High is a small, entirely low-income junior high in a historic railroad town with affordable housing and an active civic culture. Its academic results show a relative strength in seventh-grade math but broad weakness elsewhere, especially in eighth-grade math. Families evaluating this school would benefit from asking directly about the eighth-grade math trajectory, what support structures exist for literacy across both grades, and how the school approaches the transition into high school.
See more original research from School Decision →