Summary:
Zip code 39095 in Lexington, Mississippi, is served by just one middle school—S.V. Marshall Middle School—which enrolls 321 students in grades 6 through 8 and is part of the Holmes County Consolidated district, a district that ranks in the bottom 13% of Mississippi districts.
For parents, the most important takeaway is that S.V. Marshall faces serious academic challenges, with proficiency rates running roughly 20 to 30 percentage points behind state averages in every subject. In 2025–2026, 8th-grade ELA proficiency was just 9.9%, 8th-grade math was 16.5%, and 8th-grade science was 27.5%—all far below the state. That said, there are a few bright spots. The school’s chronic absenteeism rate of 14.8% is much better than the district’s 30.9% and even better than the state’s 23.9%, meaning attendance is not the main problem. Also, 7th-grade math proficiency reached 38.4%, slightly above the district average and the school’s strongest subject-grade combination. Seventh-grade ELA also improved sharply from 14.1% to 23.3% year-over-year. Those gains, however, were offset by declines in 6th and 8th grade, and the school’s overall state ranking sits near the bottom—248 out of 260 in the most recent year.
This is a high-poverty school, with 100% of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, which provides important context for the low test scores. Still, the school does outperform its district in several 6th- and 7th-grade subjects during the latest testing year. The biggest concern is the 8th-grade cohort, which appears to fall further behind state expectations across all tested subjects. For parents considering this school, the picture is mixed: attendance is a relative strength, and 7th grade shows signs of promise, but overall academic proficiency remains critically low and the school has struggled to sustain year-over-year improvement.
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