Beat Four Elementary School, Waynesboro MS

Original Research by School Decision on Beat Four Elementary School

Beat Four Elementary School sits along Highway 84 outside Waynesboro, Mississippi, serving pre-kindergarten through eighth grade as part of the Wayne County School District. It is a traditional public school, not a charter or magnet, and its enrollment is modest for a school covering that many grade levels. The student body is majority White with a substantial Black minority and a small share of students identifying as two or more races. Every student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, which means the school operates with the economic profile of a high-poverty rural community.

Waynesboro itself is a small city functioning as the county seat of Wayne County, positioned in southeastern Mississippi near the Chickasawhay River and roughly an hour's drive from Hattiesburg. Publicly reported sources describe it as a regional center for commerce and local services with a courthouse-centered downtown and auto-oriented infrastructure along major highways. The town's population has been contracting over recent decades, and no major new housing developments or growth initiatives surfaced in available research. For a family considering this area, that means a quiet, rural setting with limited civic amenities and a housing market that remains quite affordable. Home values in the school's zip code sit well below both the state and national benchmarks, and the price-to-income ratio is favorable compared with the national figure. Rent data was not available. The area's recent year-over-year home value appreciation has been strong, which may reflect broader market conditions rather than local growth.

On state assessments, Beat Four's results tell a mixed and grade-dependent story. In English language arts, third graders posted a strong proficiency rate, with nearly two-thirds of tested students reaching proficiency. That figure drops sharply in fourth grade and continues to lag through the middle grades, with roughly a quarter or fewer of students proficient in fifth through eighth. Math follows a similar pattern. Third and fourth graders performed reasonably well, with about half of tested students proficient, but fifth and eighth grade math results were weak, and sixth grade was low as well. Seventh grade math recovered somewhat. Science, tested only in fifth and eighth grades, landed in the moderate-to-low range. The overall pattern suggests the school does a better job in the earliest tested grades than in the upper grades, and a parent might want to look into how instruction and support change as students move through the middle-grade transition.

The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report, and that absence reflects the grade band rather than a missing measure. Data on individualized education program rates, English learner status, discipline, course access, staffing, and attendance was not available in the provided records, so those dimensions cannot be characterized here. Multi-year trend data was also absent, meaning there is no way to tell from the available information whether these proficiency levels are improving or declining over time. Participation rates for the state assessments were listed as missing across all grades and subjects.

The Wayne County School District brief yielded little in the way of parent-relevant changes or strategic priorities, so there is nothing to report on recent district-level initiatives or shifts. A family evaluating Beat Four would be looking at a school in a rural, economically strained community where early-grade instruction appears to produce stronger results than the upper grades. The contrast between third-grade performance and eighth-grade performance is wide enough to warrant direct questions of school leadership about what happens between those points.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 347%

School 47% · District 41% · ▲ 6 pts above district

▼ 3 pts below state median

Grade 452%

School 52% · District 53% · ▼ 1 pts below district

▲ 2 pts above state median

Grade 521%

School 21% · District 27% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▼ 21 pts below state median

Grade 626%

School 26% · District 28% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▼ 25 pts below state median

Grade 742%

School 42% · District 53% · ▼ 12 pts below district

▼ 10 pts below state median

Grade 818%

School 18% · District 37% · ▼ 19 pts below district

▼ 26 pts below state median

English language arts

Grade 365%

School 65% · District 47% · ▲ 18 pts above district

▲ 17 pts above state median

Grade 439%

School 39% · District 39%

▼ 10 pts below state median

Grade 527%

School 27% · District 41% · ▼ 14 pts below district

▼ 24 pts below state median

Grade 620%

School 20% · District 31% · ▼ 11 pts below district

▼ 22 pts below state median

Grade 725%

School 25% · District 34% · ▼ 9 pts below district

▼ 7 pts below state median

Grade 826%

School 26% · District 40% · ▼ 13 pts below district

▼ 10 pts below state median

Science

Grade 536%

School 36% · District 46% · ▼ 10 pts below district

▼ 28 pts below state median

Grade 829%

School 29% · District 50% · ▼ 21 pts below district

▼ 24 pts below state median

This schoolWAYNE 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.