Summary:
Carthage, Mississippi is home to three elementary schools serving a combined total of 1,086 students across grades PK–8 in a high-poverty area. The schools include Leake Central Elementary School, Standing Pine Elementary School, and Red Water Elementary School.
Leake Central Elementary School is by far the largest school, with 850 students in grades PK–5, and it belongs to the Leake County School District, which is ranked 114 out of 134 districts statewide. Leake Central itself has a 1-star rating and ranks 318 out of 377 Mississippi elementary schools for 2025–2026. The two smaller schools, Standing Pine Elementary School and Red Water Elementary School, have only 119 and 117 students respectively, and they boast much lower student-teacher ratios of 7.6 and 5.8, compared to Leake Central’s 15.8. However, neither smaller school has any test score or ranking data available, so their academic performance cannot be compared.
Across all three schools, poverty is nearly universal, with free/reduced lunch eligibility ranging from 97.44% to 100%. Leake Central Elementary School’s academic results are well below state averages; the biggest gap is in 4th grade math, where only 16.3% of students are proficient versus 51.5% statewide. The school does show a positive sign in chronic absenteeism at 14.8%, much better than the district and state averages of about 23.8%. Test scores also swing sharply between years, suggesting cohort effects rather than stable trends. Overall, the data are limited, but they point to considerable academic challenges in Carthage, with Leake Central’s performance in the bottom sixth of the state and the smaller schools lacking the assessment data needed for a full evaluation.
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