Central High School

Central High School in Hayneville, AL, is a small public high school serving 175 students in grades 9-12 within the Lowndes County school district, a rural area where the vast majority of students come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Central High School is currently facing significant academic challenges. The school ranks in the bottom 1% of Alabama high schools, with proficiency rates that are far below state averages across all subjects. For the 2025-2026 school year, science proficiency has dropped to 0%, while math (2%) and English (4.08%) proficiency remain critically low. These scores are slightly lower than nearby Calhoun High School (2.56% math, 5.13% English) and Southside High School (3.85% math, 5.88% English), though all three schools trail the state average of 33.73% in English by a wide margin. The graduation rate of 80.4% is also below the state average of 91.5%, and lower than Calhoun's 86.3%, though slightly above Southside's 78.3%. Chronic absenteeism affects 24.8% of students—more than double the state rate—but this is a notable improvement from 31.9% the previous year, suggesting that attendance interventions may be starting to work.

There are some positive signs worth noting. Central High School has the most favorable student-teacher ratio among its peers at 12.5:1, and it spends more per student ($15,465) than either Calhoun or Southside. The school also demonstrated in 2022-2023 that it can achieve better outcomes, when English proficiency reached 21.88% and the school earned its best ranking in nearly a decade. While that progress wasn't sustained, the recent drop in chronic absenteeism and the school's capacity for improvement suggest that with continued focus, Central High School could build on these small gains in the years ahead.