Summary:
Zip code 38676 contains just one middle school, Tunica Middle School, which serves grades 6 through 8 with an enrollment of 334 students and is part of the Tunica School District. Because only one school is present, there are no school-to-school comparisons to make within the area; instead, the focus is on how Tunica Middle School performs against Mississippi state averages and on its own strengths and challenges over time.
The most notable finding is that math is a clear strength while English Language Arts is a major concern. In the most recent school year, average math proficiency across grades was 53.1%, nearly matching the state average of 53.9%, with 8th grade math actually surpassing the state by 2.2 points. By contrast, ELA proficiency averaged just 21.4%, a full 20.5 points below the state average of 41.9%. Science proficiency in 8th grade was 47.0%, also below the state mark of 57.8%. The school serves an extremely high-poverty population, with 99.7% of students eligible for free or reduced lunch, and chronic absenteeism runs at 31.5%, higher than both the district's 29.2% and the state's 23.9%. On a positive note, the student-teacher ratio is a favorable 12.3.
Tunica Middle School has held a steady 2-star rating over the past three years, but its state percentile ranking has slipped from 42nd to 33rd, meaning other Mississippi schools are improving faster. Year-over-year changes have been mixed: 8th grade ELA improved by 2.8 points and 8th grade science jumped by 8.8 points, but 6th grade ELA dropped sharply by 8.7 points and 7th grade math fell by 6.9 points. ELA proficiency also tends to decline as students advance, falling from 23.7% in 6th grade to 20.4% in 8th grade in the most recent year. Overall, Tunica Middle School is competitive in math, particularly at the 8th grade level, but literacy and chronic absenteeism remain the biggest hurdles to raising its standing.
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