Summary:
The city of De Kalb, Mississippi, is served by three public schools in the Kemper County School District, spanning grades 4 through 12 with roughly 600 students, in a high-poverty area where every child qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch.
All three schools — KCSD Upper Elementary School, Kemper County Middle School, and Kemper County High School — hold 1-star ratings and rank in the bottom quarter of Mississippi schools, but they differ in important ways. KCSD Upper Elementary is the district's bright spot, with its rank climbing from the 14th to the 25th percentile over three years and chronic absenteeism of 19.7%, the only campus below the state average. It also has the district's strongest elementary reading scores, with 44.4% of 4th graders proficient in ELA. Kemper County Middle saw dramatic one-year gains in 8th grade, with math proficiency jumping from 20.9% to 47% and science from 20.9% to 49%. Kemper County High posts an exceptional 96.8% graduation rate and Algebra I proficiency of 58.3%, close to the state average, but suffers from 35.4% chronic absenteeism and just 24.5% proficiency in English II, less than half the state rate.
Student-teacher ratios are low across all schools — 7 to 11 students per teacher — but small classes have not fully offset poverty and attendance issues. Absenteeism rises sharply with grade level, from 19.7% in elementary to 26.2% in middle and 35.4% in high school, which helps explain weak high school reading scores. The encouraging trend is that the elementary and middle schools are moving upward in state rankings. For parents, KCSD Upper Elementary offers the most consistent improvement and best attendance, Kemper County Middle has shown powerful recent gains in math and science, and Kemper County High School is a strong choice for students who stay enrolled, given its outstanding graduation rate.
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