Best Public Schools in Coldwater, MS

The city of Coldwater, Mississippi, is served by a single district, the Tate County School District, which operates three public schools — Independence High School (grades 7–12), East Tate Elementary (grades K–6), and Coldwater Elementary School (grades K–6) — with the district as a whole ranking in the bottom 20% of Mississippi districts.

Looking at the three schools, Independence High School is the top-ranked school in the city (34th percentile), but its overall performance is a mixed picture. Its best news is in high school end-of-course exams: Algebra I (60% proficient), Biology (53.9%), and English II (40.5%) all outperformed the district average, and in the prior year several subjects beat the state average. However, the school struggles badly in grades 7 and 8—for example, only 16.9% of 7th graders are proficient in ELA—and it has the highest chronic absenteeism rate in the city at 33.2%, meaning one in three students is chronically absent. East Tate Elementary is the stronger elementary school, with 6th-grade math proficiency (52.8%) essentially tied with the state average and above the district. It also had standout 5th-grade results in the prior year. Yet its rank fell sharply from 44th to 26th percentile, driven by a 26-point drop in 5th-grade ELA. Coldwater Elementary School is the smallest school, has the highest poverty rate (91% free/reduced lunch), and the lowest rank (15th percentile). It has shown some dramatic single-grade improvements—5th-grade ELA jumped from 12.5% to 40%—but remains far behind state averages in most subjects.

Across all three schools, the biggest takeaway is instability. Scores swing wildly from year to year, especially in small grade cohorts, and every school has chronic absenteeism above the state average of 23.9%. The middle-school transition looks especially problematic: East Tate’s 6th-grade math proficiency is 52.8%, but Independence’s 7th-grade math proficiency is just 28.2%. Poverty is high everywhere, but East Tate shows that some grade levels can still reach state averages despite high poverty. For parents, the key concern is consistency: no school in Coldwater is currently above the state median, and the recent trend points downward across the district.