Summary:
Pelahatchie, Mississippi, is served by just two public schools—Pelahatchie Elementary, serving grades PK–6 with 385 students, and Pelahatchie High School, serving grades 7–12 with 336 students—together covering the full PK–12 spectrum within the Rankin County School District, a district ranked in the 81st percentile statewide. Despite this strong district standing, the two Pelahatchie schools show mixed performance relative to district and state averages, and they are moving in opposite directions.
Pelahatchie Elementary has climbed from the 54th to the 60th percentile in statewide rankings over three years, despite a poverty rate of 70.65%. Its math proficiency (52.6%) exceeds the state average, and its 5th grade science proficiency (79.7%) is well above the state's 71.5%. Pelahatchie High School, meanwhile, has slipped from the 41st to the 35th percentile and struggles with ELA (32.2% vs. state 42.3%) and math (40.5% vs. state 58.4%), with Algebra I proficiency especially low at 28.6%.
Strong points exist at the secondary level too. Pelahatchie High School boasts an excellent 96.6% graduation rate, biology proficiency of 76.3% that beats both district and state averages, and a student-to-teacher ratio of just 8.6:1. Both schools, however, have chronic absenteeism rates—22.1% at the elementary and 18.3% at the high school—that exceed the district average of 13.7%. Since both schools trail Rankin County averages in nearly every subject, the greatest opportunity lies in closing the gap between Pelahatchie and the rest of this otherwise strong district.
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