Summary:
Flowood, Mississippi is home to two public elementary schools—Northwest Elementary (477 students) and Flowood Elementary (458 students)—both serving pre-kindergarten through 5th grade within the strong 4-star Rankin County School District. Together, these two schools offer families in this Jackson-area suburb a choice between a historically high-performing school and a rapidly improving one.
Northwest Elementary has traditionally been the academic leader in Flowood. It earned a 5-star rating and a 92nd-percentile ranking (33rd in the state) as recently as 2023–24, and it continues to hold the higher overall ranking in 2025–26 at 70th place (81st percentile). That said, Northwest has slipped from its peak, with a particularly concerning 20-point drop in 5th-grade math proficiency. Flowood Elementary, meanwhile, has been steadily closing the gap. In 2023–24, the two schools were 60 rankings apart; by 2025–26, the gap had narrowed to just 8 positions. Flowood now matches Northwest in overall ELA proficiency and actually surpasses it in 4th-grade ELA (65.5% vs. 56.7%) and 4th-grade math (62.1% vs. 57.8%), making its upper-elementary instruction a growing strength.
Both schools outperform the state average of 54.0% in all-subject proficiency, though they trail their district's 70.1% average. Science is a bright spot at both: 5th-grade science proficiency stands at 85.5% at Northwest and 82.6% at Flowood, far above the state's 71.5%. One flag for parents: Flowood's 3rd-grade ELA proficiency fell sharply from 69.4% to 54.4%, while Northwest's improved to 62.3%—so early literacy deserves attention at Flowood. Flowood also serves a higher percentage of economically disadvantaged students (50.87% free/reduced lunch vs. 37.11%) and has higher chronic absenteeism (15.7% vs. 12.6%), though both are well below the state rate. In short, Northwest remains the ranking leader, but Flowood is the school on the rise.
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