Middle Schools in Hattiesburg

The Hattiesburg school district in Mississippi has two middle schools: N R Burger Middle, serving 525 students in grades 7-8, and Hattiesburg STEAM Academy, serving 263 students in grade 6, with both schools serving 100% free/reduced-price lunch students. Because Hattiesburg STEAM Academy covers only 6th grade and N R Burger Middle covers 7th and 8th grades, the two schools effectively operate as one two-step middle school feeder system, meaning the performance of STEAM Academy's 6th graders directly impacts N R Burger when those students move up. The Hattiesburg district itself ranks slightly above the middle of Mississippi districts, at 48th out of 134 with a 3-star rating.

N R Burger Middle is the larger, more established school and has shown a positive ranking trajectory, improving from the 46th percentile in 2023-2024 to the 58th percentile in 2025-2026. Its strongest academic area is 8th grade math, where 59.9% of students are proficient, well above the state average of 51.4%. The school also posted gains in 8th grade science (+4.0 points). However, English Language Arts is a clear weak point: 8th grade ELA proficiency dropped 8.1 points to just 35.0%, and chronic absenteeism sits at 26.1%, above both district and state averages. Math proficiency runs roughly 15 to 25 points higher than ELA in both grades at this school.

Hattiesburg STEAM Academy started strong in 2024-2025 with 6th grade proficiency rates above state averages in both ELA (50.4%) and math (53.1%), but experienced the largest decline in the data set in 2025-2026, with ELA falling 12.0 points to 38.4% and math falling 6.3 points to 46.8%. Despite better attendance than its sister school (20.5% chronic absenteeism versus 26.1%), STEAM Academy's test scores dropped significantly. Taken together, both schools share a pattern: math consistently outperforms ELA, and N R Burger Middle is on an upward trajectory while Hattiesburg STEAM Academy needs immediate attention in literacy. The district-wide priority should be strengthening English Language Arts instruction while building on the math success at N R Burger Middle.