Best Public Schools in Zip Code 38603

Zip code 38603 in Ashland, Mississippi is served by two public schools—Ashland Elementary School (grades K-6) and Ashland High School (grades 7-12)—both part of the Benton County School District, a 3-star district ranked near the middle of Mississippi. These are small, high-poverty schools, with roughly 94% of elementary and 88% of high school students eligible for free/reduced lunch, yet the district overall performs around the state median.

Ashland Elementary School is the stronger of the two schools. It has improved from the 22nd to the 32nd percentile in statewide rankings over two years, and its chronic absenteeism rate (17.7%) is far better than the district (22.3%) and state (23.9%). The elementary school shines in 4th grade, with 69.2% proficiency in math and 48.8% in ELA—both well above state averages. However, its 5th-grade math proficiency crashes to just 13.5%, a 55-point drop that suggests a transition or curriculum issue worth investigating. In contrast, Ashland High School is a combined middle/high school, which drags down its overall rating. Seventh-grade ELA is the lowest subject score in either school at just 14.3%, and Algebra I proficiency (28.9%) is far below the state average of 66.0%. Despite these academic struggles, the high school posts an excellent 96.3% graduation rate, well above the state’s 89.2%, and its U.S. History proficiency (80.6%) is a clear strength.

Year-over-year trends are uneven but generally positive. The elementary school improved sharply in 4th-grade math and ELA, while the high school made gains in English II and 8th-grade ELA but regressed badly in Algebra I. Both schools still rank in the lower third of Mississippi schools, but their upward trajectories—elementary from the 22nd to 32nd percentile, high school from the 6th to 19th percentile—show meaningful progress. For parents, the biggest red flags are the math collapse at 5th grade and weak early secondary math, while the strongest signals are the elementary school’s 4th-grade performance and the high school’s high graduation rate.