Summary:
Zip code 31779 is home to one high school, Pelham High School, which serves grades 9-12 and is part of the Pelham City school district in a small, rural Georgia community.
Pelham High School stands out for its strong student persistence despite serving a population with very high economic need—97.4% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. The school posts a 93.4% graduation rate, which beats the state average by more than six points, and its chronic absenteeism rate of 8.7% is less than half the state's 17.7%. With a favorable 11:1 student-teacher ratio and per-student spending of $15,527, the school appears well-resourced. However, academic proficiency lags significantly behind state averages across all tested subjects. In 2025-2026, only 32.8% of students were proficient in Algebra I (state: 48.1%), 35.9% in Biology (state: 47.2%), and just 20.0% in U.S. History (state: 38.5%).
Trends are concerning, as proficiency declined in every subject from the prior year, with Algebra I dropping 10.3 points. This contributed to the school falling to 326th out of 455 Georgia high schools—its lowest ranking in three years and a drop of 62 spots from the previous year. The U.S. History gap of 18.5 points below the state is the school's weakest area. Still, the school's ability to keep students engaged and graduating is a genuine bright spot, suggesting a strong school culture that could serve as a foundation for academic improvement. Since this is the district's only high school, all district-level metrics mirror the school's performance exactly. Note that English Language Arts (ELA) scores are not included in this release; those results arrive in December and should not be interpreted as a gap or decline.
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