Summary:
Wilkinson County High School is the only high school in the Wilkinson County School District, serving grades 9–12 in Woodville, Mississippi, with 228 students. This small, rural school faces severe challenges that have kept it in the bottom 1% of Mississippi high schools for three straight years, ranking 225th out of 228 schools in 2023–2024, 229th out of 232 in 2024–2025, and 221st out of 224 in 2025–2026. The district itself is ranked last in the state at 134th out of 134 districts, with a zero-star rating.
Families should know that every student at the school qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting an extremely high-poverty population, and more than half of students (56.1%) were chronically absent in 2023–2024 — more than double the state rate of 23.9%. The graduation rate is just 69.2%, compared to the state average of 89.2%, leaving a 20-point gap. Test scores are also far below state averages: in 2025–2026, only 23.9% of students passed Algebra I (state: 66.0%), 23.5% passed English II (state: 49.3%), and 25.5% passed Biology (state: 63.1%). The school reports 7th and 8th grade test scores as well, with math and ELA proficiency rates in the low teens.
There are modest signs of improvement from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, including a 12.1-point jump in Biology proficiency and a 7.8-point gain in English II, but the school remains decades behind state averages. Interestingly, the student–teacher ratio is a low 8.6, meaning class sizes are small, yet this has not translated into better outcomes — suggesting the core issues are attendance, poverty, and resource access rather than staffing. For parents considering this school, the picture is sobering: intense economic disadvantage, widespread chronic absenteeism, and persistently low academic performance point to a school in urgent need of comprehensive support, despite a small enrollment that could allow for more personalized attention.
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