Summary:
Joel E. Smilow Collegiate is a single-school district in Jackson, Mississippi, serving one elementary school, Smilow Collegiate, with grades K–4 and an enrollment of 547 students. Because this is the district’s only school, all district-level results are exactly the same as the school’s results, and the district’s low ranking of 128 out of 134 statewide is a direct reflection of this one school’s performance.
Smilow Collegiate serves a 100% economically disadvantaged student population, but its academic results are far below state averages in every tested subject and grade. In the most recent year, proficiency rates ranged from just 14.4% in 3rd grade math to 36.3% in 4th grade English Language Arts, while state averages were between 48.5% and 52.4%. The largest gap was in 3rd grade math, where only about 1 in 7 students was proficient compared to about 1 in 2 statewide. The school’s strongest area is 4th grade ELA, while 3rd grade math is its weakest. Every subject declined from the prior year, with 3rd grade math falling a dramatic 15.1 percentage points, dropping the school from a 1-star to a 0-star rating and from the 14th to the 8th percentile statewide.
One relative strength is attendance: despite 100% poverty, the school’s chronic absenteeism rate of 20.8% is actually better than the state average of 23.9%. Also, 4th graders consistently outperform 3rd graders in both reading and math, which may indicate that student skills improve as they progress through the early grades. For parents, the key takeaway is that Smilow Collegiate is a high-poverty elementary school facing serious academic challenges, particularly in math. The sharp drop in scores from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026 erased earlier gains, and the school now ranks near the bottom of Mississippi’s elementary schools. However, better-than-average attendance and a relatively stronger 4th grade reading performance offer potential areas to build on for improvement.
Thank you for your feedback!