The top reported proficiency rate is 47% in Science. The lowest is 35% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on William M Colmer Middle School
William M. Colmer Middle School sits on Eden Street in Pascagoula, a Gulf Coast city where heavy industry and family life sit side by side. The school serves seventh and eighth graders in the Pascagoula-Gautier School District. Pascagoula is a working city defined by shipbuilding and refining. Ingalls Shipbuilding, the state's largest employer, and Chevron's largest refinery bookend the town, joined by Bollinger Shipyards, Rolls Royce Naval Marine, and a web of contractors and suppliers. Publicly reported sources describe Pascagoula as an attractive place for families, recognized by Nasdaq as one of the top five cities to raise a family in the Southeast. The city has a historic downtown core, formerly the town of Scranton, where events like the Goula Palooza festival bring people together. The built environment is generally car-dependent, with U.S. Route 90 running through as a main arterial. Civic anchors include Shepard State Park, the Gulf Islands National Seashore just off the coast, and the Old Spanish Fort, the oldest building in the Mississippi Valley. Amtrak's Mardi Gras Service began serving the city recently. The population peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s during the height of Cold War defense spending and has slightly declined since. Post-Hurricane Katrina rebuilding reshaped parts of the city, with geotubes installed under the beach for storm protection and homes required to be rebuilt on pilings.
Colmer's enrollment is moderate for a two-grade middle school. Every student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, which places the school firmly in a high-poverty context. The student body is diverse. Black students make up the largest share, followed by White students and a sizable Hispanic population. A smaller group of students identify as two or more races, and a handful are Asian or American Indian or Alaska Native. Data on students with individualized education programs and English learners was not reported, so those figures are not available here.
State assessment results come from the MAAP, Mississippi's regular state test, and cover the most recent school year. In seventh-grade math, roughly half of tested students reached proficiency, the strongest result the school shows. Eighth-grade math dropped to about a third proficient. English language arts tells a different story across the two grades. Seventh-grade ELA had the lowest proficiency rate among the reported measures, with less than a third of students proficient. Eighth-grade ELA improved to around two-fifths. Eighth-grade science was a relative bright spot, with nearly half of students demonstrating proficiency. Participation rates were not available in the data. No multi-year trend data was provided, so it is hard to say whether these results represent improvement, decline, or stability. The state does not assign a letter grade or ranking in this dataset, and no neighbor comparison was available to place Colmer against nearby schools.
Because Colmer serves only seventh and eighth grades, it has no graduation rate, no AP or dual-credit coursework, and no college-readiness metrics. Those data points simply do not apply to a school with this grade band. Program offerings, course access, staffing, discipline, attendance, and civil-rights data were all absent from the payload, so a parent looking for detail on extracurriculars, teacher experience, or school climate will want to ask the school directly. Title I status and magnet status were not specified in the data, though the universal free-or-reduced-price-lunch rate suggests the school likely operates under federal poverty-related support.
The housing market around Colmer is affordable compared with state and national benchmarks. Home values in the school's zip code sit well below the Mississippi state average and far below the national figure, with a slight year-over-year decline. Rents have risen sharply over the past year, though rent-to-income burden remains modest. The price-to-income ratio is favorable, and the gap between renting and owning is wide enough that purchase looks financially accessible for working families with stable income.
Within the Pascagoula-Gautier School District, one change stands out for families considering the area. Jackson Elementary School in Gautier is scheduled to close after the current school year, which will redraw attendance zones and shift where Gautier families send their elementary-aged children. This does not directly affect Colmer, but it signals that the district is in a period of restructuring, and a family moving into the broader district should confirm current attendance boundaries rather than rely on older maps. Limited public information was available on other district-level changes such as curriculum shifts or facility investments, so those are left out rather than guessed at.
For a parent weighing Colmer, the academic picture is mixed. Seventh-grade math and eighth-grade science show that a good portion of students are meeting state standards, while seventh-grade ELA and eighth-grade math point to areas where many students are still working toward proficiency. The school serves a community where industry anchors the local economy and housing costs stay low. Families whose children would attend Colmer may want to look further into what the school offers beyond the test results, since the data here covers academics but leaves most of the school-environment picture blank.
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