The top reported proficiency rate is 50% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Dexter Elementary School
Dexter Elementary School, also known as Dexter Attendance Center, sits on Highway 48 East just outside Tylertown, Mississippi, in the Walthall County School District. It is a small rural school serving kindergarten through eighth grade, and its size is one of the first things a parent should understand about it. With only a few dozen students spread across nine grade levels, individual classrooms can have very few children, and the whole school operates more like a close-knit community than a conventional campus. This is a place where teachers likely know every student by name, and where a family's relationship with staff can be direct and personal. The tradeoff is that a small enrollment limits the range of programs, extracurriculars, and specialized staff that a larger school could support.
The student body reflects the surrounding community. White students make up a slim majority, with Black students forming the next largest group, and a small number of Hispanic, multiracial, and American Indian or Alaska Native students rounding out the enrollment. Every student in the school qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, which signals that this is a community facing concentrated economic need. That fact does not tell you anything about the quality of teaching, but it does mean the school carries a heavy responsibility for meeting children where they are, and families may want to ask directly about tutoring, counseling, and other supports available to students living in poverty.
State testing data for this school is almost entirely suppressed. With so few students per grade, Mississippi's privacy rules keep most results from being reported. The one grade for which proficiency was reported shows roughly half of tested students reaching proficient or above in both math and English language arts. That single data point is too thin to characterize the school's overall academic performance. It does not tell you whether the school is strong or struggling; it tells you the numbers are too small to read from a distance. A parent considering Dexter would get a clearer picture by visiting and asking the principal about grade-level growth, classroom assessments, and how the school handles the challenge of teaching mixed-grade or very small classes.
The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report here. That metric belongs to the high schools in the Walthall County district, where the district brief notes a publicly reported rise in graduation rates over a five-year stretch, moving from a level near the bottom of Mississippi districts to a meaningfully higher one. For families thinking long-term about what happens after eighth grade, that upward trend in the district is worth noting, though Dexter itself is only the first leg of that pathway.
Information on staffing, discipline, course access, attendance, and civil-rights indicators was not available in the data provided. The same is true for specific program offerings, magnet or Title I status details, and any locale description beyond the school's Tylertown mailing address. These gaps mean the picture here is partial, and a family would need to go directly to the school or district office for those particulars rather than relying on what any summary can provide.
Housing in the surrounding area is relatively inexpensive compared with state and national benchmarks, with typical home values sitting well below the Mississippi state level and far below the national level. The local market has seen a modest recent decline in home values. For a family already tied to the area for work or family reasons, housing costs are unlikely to be a barrier. For someone considering relocating in, the affordability is real, but so is the limited local housing stock typical of a rural county.
What Dexter offers is a small, familiar setting where children spend their entire elementary and middle-school years in one building. For some families that continuity is a genuine strength. For others the question is whether such a small school can provide the academic challenge, social breadth, and enrichment their child needs. The testing data cannot answer that on its own. A visit, a conversation with the principal, and a look at the classrooms would tell a parent more than any report can.
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