Leake Central Junior High School

Leake Central Junior High School is a public middle school in Carthage, MS, serving 383 students in grades 6–8 as part of the Leake County School District. The district currently ranks in the bottom 15% of Mississippi districts with a 1-star rating, and the school itself has consistently landed in the lower quarter of the state’s middle schools. In the most recent 2025–2026 ranking, Leake Central placed 209th out of 260 schools (20th percentile, 1 star), with no sustained improvement over the past decade. By contrast, nearby Shirley D. Simmons Middle School in the Madison County Schools district ranks in the 59th percentile with 3 stars—a stark difference that highlights how much district context matters.

Academically, Leake Central trails the state average in nearly every subject and grade level. For example, 8th-grade science proficiency is 40.8% compared to 57.8% statewide, while Simmons posts an exceptional 84.7%. Math and ELA scores are also below state averages, though 7th-grade math (47.1%) is the school’s strongest relative showing. The school operates with a student–teacher ratio of 14.0, notably higher than Simmons’ 6.3 and Choctaw Central Middle School’s 8.9. All three schools serve very high-poverty communities, but Leake Central has the highest rate at 100% free/reduced lunch eligibility. Chronic absenteeism is 20.4%—better than the state average but still meaning roughly one in five students misses significant school time, and that likely drags down performance.

One bright spot is the Algebra I End-of-Course exam, where the school has reported 100% proficiency for three consecutive years—though this likely reflects a small, selected group of advanced 8th graders rather than a schoolwide trend. Another notable pattern is 8th-grade math proficiency, which has swung from 32.9% to 63.2% back down to 32.2%, suggesting cohort-specific volatility rather than stable gains. With persistent bottom-quartile rankings, higher class sizes, and high absenteeism, the biggest opportunities for improvement are reducing chronic absence, adding instructional staff, and learning from high-poverty, high-performing schools like Simmons.