The top reported proficiency rate is 35% in English language arts. The lowest is 26% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Newton Elementary School
Newton Elementary School sits on West Tatum Street in Newton, a small Mississippi city that serves as the county seat of Newton County. The town grew up as an agricultural and railroad hub at the crossing of Interstate 20 and Highway 15, roughly a half-hour west of Meridian. Its downtown clusters around the Newton County Courthouse and the historic Newton Depot, with Potterchitto Creek running along the western and northern edges. Newton has been losing population over the past two decades, and publicly reported data describe a community with modest median household income and a substantial poverty rate. The city's own promotional language calls the Southeast the fastest-growing region in the country, but local figures tell a quieter story of contraction. Housing here is inexpensive relative to the state and the nation, with typical home values well below Mississippi's benchmark and far below national levels. Values have been drifting downward recently, which tells you something about demand in the area.
The school serves pre-kindergarten through fifth grade and belongs to the Newton Municipal School District. It is a traditional public school, not a charter and not a magnet. The enrollment is small for its grade band, with every student in the building qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is overwhelmingly Black, with small numbers of children from other racial and ethnic backgrounds. The school does not report IEP or English-learner figures, so those populations are unknown from the available data. A parent considering this school should know that nearly all classmates come from low-income households, which shapes the peer environment and the resources the school can draw on.
Academic results from the most recent Mississippi Academic Assessment Program are available for grades three through five. In math, proficiency runs low across the tested grades, with the share of students meeting or exceeding expectations hovering below a third in each grade. Fifth grade posted the strongest math result of the three, while fourth grade was the weakest. English language arts results are somewhat better but still modest, with the share of students scoring proficient or above landing between roughly a third and nearly two-fifths depending on the grade. Fourth grade again showed the lowest math proficiency but the highest ELA proficiency, an interesting pattern a parent may want to look into further with the school. Science was tested only in fifth grade, and the proficiency rate there sat close to a third of tested students.
No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say from the provided information whether these results represent improvement, decline, or stability. Participation rates were also missing from the data set. Because the school does not serve high school grades, there is no graduation rate to report, and that absence reflects the grade band rather than any gap in the school's performance.
Information on discipline, course access, staffing, attendance, and specific program offerings was not available. The school's Title I status and locale classification were also not reported, though the universal free-or-reduced-price-lunch rate and the district's profile strongly suggest a high-poverty setting. A parent looking for details on extracurriculars, specialized instruction, or support services would need to ask the school directly, because the data provided here does not cover them.
Newton Municipal School District itself drew no parent-relevant news in the search window. No referendums, curriculum overhauls, property-tax shifts, or leadership changes surfaced. The district brief came back empty, so there is little to report about strategic direction or recent initiatives.
What the picture amounts to is a small, community-rooted elementary school in a declining rural county seat, serving an almost entirely low-income student body, producing academic results that sit below where most families would want them but with some relative strengths in early literacy. Housing is very affordable, the town has civic anchors and nearby natural amenities like Bienville National Forest, and the pace of life is slow. For a family already rooted in Newton or drawn by inexpensive housing and a tight-knit community, this is a school where engagement with teachers and close attention to a child's daily progress will matter a great deal, given that the test data shows real ground to cover.
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