Summary:
Zip code 35964 is home to a single high school, Douglas High School, which serves grades 9 through 12 in the Marshall County district and enrolls 727 students.
For parents considering this area, Douglas High School presents a mixed picture. The most notable concern is a sharp academic decline in the most recent school year. The school’s state ranking fell from the 68th percentile (118th out of 374 schools) in 2024-2025 to the 44th percentile (211th out of 380) in 2025-2026, dropping its star rating from 3 to 2. This decline is driven by significant drops in 11th-grade proficiency rates: Science fell from 40% to 29.88%, and English fell from 32.24% to 24.54%. Math proficiency, however, improved slightly from 17.42% to 19.39%. In the most recent year, the school outperforms its district average in Math and Science but falls below the state average in all three subjects, with English proficiency (24.54%) trailing the state average of 33.73% by a wide margin.
On the positive side, the school boasts an exceptionally low chronic absenteeism rate of 4.3%, far better than the state average of 12.0%, and its graduation rate of 90.2% is solid, though slightly below the state’s 91.5%. The school also has a strong recent history in Science, having beaten both district and state averages the prior year. However, the student-teacher ratio of 20.6 is relatively high, and 64.79% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, indicating a high-poverty student body. The combination of strong attendance but below-average test scores suggests that while students are consistently in class, factors such as class size and socioeconomic challenges may be hindering academic achievement. Overall, this is a school with a dedicated student presence but one that is currently struggling to translate that into competitive academic outcomes.
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