Middle Schools in Nettleton School District

The Nettleton School District contains a single middle school, Nettleton Junior High, which serves grades 6 through 8 with 243 students in a high-poverty area where over 80% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. As the district's only middle school, Nettleton Junior High's test scores also represent the district's middle-school results, meaning there is no local peer school for comparison. The school has shown modest improvement in its state ranking, moving from the 37th percentile in 2018-2019 to the 40th percentile in 2025-2026, though it remains a 2-star school ranked 155th out of 260 Mississippi middle schools.

Nettleton Junior High's clearest academic strength is mathematics, particularly in 6th grade, where students have outperformed the state average by roughly 8 percentage points in both 2024-2025 and 2025-2026. Seventh-grade math also matched the state average in 2025-2026 at 57.8%. The school's biggest concern is 8th-grade performance, especially in English Language Arts, where only 14.5% of 8th graders were proficient in 2025-2026 compared to the state average of 40.9%. Eighth-grade math was also weak at 27.6% proficiency versus the state's 51.4%. Overall, ELA proficiency across all grades trails the state by roughly 12 to 14 percentage points, while math is much closer to the state average.

With just 243 students across three grades, each grade cohort is small, which means year-to-year proficiency swings can be dramatic and often reflect different groups of students rather than genuine improvement or decline. The school's chronic absenteeism rate of 23.7% is nearly identical to the state average of 23.9% and better than the district rate of 28.1%, but still means roughly one in four students misses significant school time. On a positive note, the student-teacher ratio is a low 13.5, which may support more individualized instruction. While the school has made steady ranking gains over the past several years, sustained focus on literacy and 8th-grade achievement will be essential for improving its 2-star rating.