Summary:
There is just one middle school in Conecuh County, Alabama—Thurgood Marshall Middle School in Evergreen—serving grades 6 through 8 with 167 students in a largely rural, economically challenged area.
For parents, the most important takeaway is that this school faces serious academic hurdles, especially in math. In the most recent school year, 8th-grade math proficiency was 0%, and 7th-grade math proficiency was just 4%, compared to state averages around 24-26%. This is a critical red flag. English Language Arts (ELA) performance is much stronger by comparison—7th graders hit 48% proficiency and 8th graders 41%, which is closer to the state average of 55-58%. Science is a relative bright spot, with 8th-grade proficiency at 36% versus the state's 54%. The school's overall state ranking has been consistently low, hovering in the bottom 20th percentile (a 1-star rating) for three straight years, and it currently ranks 349th out of 443 Alabama middle schools.
Context matters here. About 84% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, indicating high poverty levels. The student-teacher ratio is 22.2 to 1, which is high and may limit individualized attention. Chronic absenteeism is 13.9%, slightly above the district (12.6%) and state (12.0%) averages. Per-student spending was $13,771 in 2018-2019, which is substantial, yet results remain low—suggesting the issue may be program effectiveness rather than funding. A particularly concerning trend: the same cohort of students saw math proficiency drop from 10.71% in 7th grade to 0% in 8th grade, indicating that math challenges compound as students advance. For parents, this means the school needs urgent, targeted math intervention, while ELA and science offer more solid foundations to build upon.
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