Chickasaw Intermediate School

Chickasaw Intermediate School serves roughly 400 students in grades 3 through 6 in Chickasaw, AL, a small city within the Chickasaw City school district, where the vast majority of families (86%) qualify for free or reduced lunch.

The most striking finding is the school's split personality. In English Language Arts (ELA), Chickasaw Intermediate is a clear standout. Across every grade level, its students outperform the district average by 6 to 17 percentage points. For example, 5th graders hit 52.78% proficiency in ELA, which beats nearby CollinsRhodes Elementary School (36.07%) and Holloway Elementary (51.9%). This suggests the school has found effective literacy strategies worth celebrating. However, math tells a very different story. Proficiency rates plummet to as low as 8.33% in 5th grade—a staggering 44-point gap compared to the same grade's ELA score. This math weakness is not simply a poverty issue, as WD Robbins Elementary School, just 2.9 miles away with similar demographics, achieves 57.89% proficiency in 3rd-grade math versus Chickasaw's 26.87%.

Another red flag is chronic absenteeism. At 12.9%, the rate at Chickasaw Intermediate is nearly three times higher than the district's reported 4.6%, and it exceeds the state average of 12.0%. Missing school is especially damaging in cumulative subjects like math, which may help explain the low scores. The school also shows uneven results across student groups, with its White students ranking in the bottom 3% statewide—a significant outlier compared to its stronger performance with other subgroups. For parents, the takeaway is clear: Chickasaw Intermediate has proven it can excel in one core subject, and the challenge ahead is replicating that success in math while tackling the attendance issues that may be holding students back.