Hamilton High School, Hamilton MS

Original Research by School Decision on Hamilton High School

Hamilton High School sits in the unincorporated community of Hamilton, Mississippi, a tiny settlement in Monroe County where the school itself serves as the primary civic anchor. There is no traditional downtown here. The community formed around the arrival of the Kansas City, Memphis and Birmingham Railroad in the late 1880s, when it shifted west from its original location. Today Hamilton sits on U.S. Route 45, just east of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, with creeks threading along its edges and low-density settlement defining the surrounding landscape. The dominant local employer is the Tronox titanium dioxide manufacturing facility, publicly reported to be among the largest such operations in the world. Columbus Air Force Base lies a short drive to the south and provides additional regional employment. The largest local industry sectors are health care and social assistance, manufacturing, and transportation and warehousing.

The school is part of the Monroe County School District and serves students from pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade, making it a true community school in the sense that a child can attend from earliest years through graduation without changing buildings. Enrollment is modest for a school covering that full grade span, with small class sizes across the board. The student body is predominantly white, with a smaller Black enrollment and very few students identifying as Hispanic, multiracial, or Asian. Just over half of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Data on students with individualized education programs and English learners was not reported, so those populations cannot be characterized here.

On Mississippi's MAAP assessments, Hamilton shows generally solid results in the elementary and middle grades, with real variation from grade to grade. Math proficiency is a relative strength, with most tested grades showing a clear majority of students reaching proficiency and third grade results particularly strong. The pattern holds through middle school, though eighth grade math dips below the other grades. English language arts results are more uneven. Fifth grade stands out as a bright spot, while several other grades sit in a middling range and eighth grade trails the rest. Science results, available for fifth and eighth grades only, are strong across both, with eighth grade science among the highest proficiency levels the school posts.

A few things a parent might want to look into further. The school serves high school grades, but no graduation rate, ACT scores, or end-of-course assessment results were available in the data provided, so academic outcomes at the upper grades cannot be characterized here. Course access data, including any Advanced Placement, dual-credit, or career and technical offerings, was also absent. Staffing ratios, discipline data, and attendance figures were not reported. The absence of these measures may reflect the limited reporting scope for a school of this size and setting rather than any indication of weakness, but a family evaluating the high school years specifically would want to ask the school directly about graduation rates, college and career pathways, and program offerings.

The housing market around Hamilton is affordable relative to both state and national benchmarks. Home values sit below the Mississippi statewide figure and well below the national level, and the price-to-income ratio suggests that ownership is within reach for many local households. Year-over-year home value growth has been modest but positive. Rental data was not available for this area. No parks, libraries, or public transit systems were identified in the community, which is consistent with its rural, unincorporated character. The school functions as the gathering point, and daily life revolves around it, the Tronox facility, and the road connections north and south.

We looked for recent district-level changes that might affect families and found little of lasting impact in publicly available sources, so there is nothing specific to report on that front. The Monroe County School District itself appears in the data as the governing entity, and Hamilton High School operates as one of its attendance centers. For a family considering this area, the school offers continuity from early childhood through senior year in a single setting, solid elementary and middle-grade assessment results, and a community where housing is affordable and the pace is rural. The gaps in available high school data are where questions to the school itself would be most useful.

See more original research from School Decision →

Academic performance

State test results and graduation outcomes.

Graduation rate (ACGR)

>=90%Cohort of 49 students · Class of 2021

The federal source publishes a banded range instead of an exact rate when the graduating cohort is small enough that an exact number could risk identifying individual students.

How this school compares to all schools in this state

Each dot is one school’s SY 2020-21 graduation rate, binned by integer rate. Taller columns mean more schools at that rate. This school is highlighted.

241 schools plotted. 29 additional schools' rates are federally suppressed and not shown. Data: EDFacts SY 2020-21.

Math

Grade 379%

School 79% · District 76% · ▲ 3 pts above district

▲ 29 pts above state median

Grade 463%

School 63% · District 72% · ▼ 9 pts below district

▲ 13 pts above state median

Grade 567%

School 67% · District 66% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▲ 25 pts above state median

Grade 665%

School 65% · District 71% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▲ 14 pts above state median

Grade 763%

School 63% · District 63%

▲ 11 pts above state median

Grade 859%

School 59% · District 64% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▲ 15 pts above state median

English language arts

Grade 367%

School 67% · District 63% · ▲ 3 pts above district

▲ 19 pts above state median

Grade 455%

School 55% · District 66% · ▼ 11 pts below district

▲ 7 pts above state median

Grade 578%

School 78% · District 65% · ▲ 13 pts above district

▲ 27 pts above state median

Grade 657%

School 57% · District 53% · ▲ 4 pts above district

▲ 15 pts above state median

Grade 761%

School 61% · District 47% · ▲ 13 pts above district

▲ 29 pts above state median

Grade 848%

School 48% · District 47% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▲ 12 pts above state median

Science

Grade 575%

School 75% · District 74% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▲ 10 pts above state median

Grade 879%

School 79% · District 67% · ▲ 12 pts above district

▲ 26 pts above state median

This schoolMONROE CO SCHOOL DIST, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.