Best Middle Schools in Zip Code 39206

ZIP code 39206 in Jackson, Mississippi, is home to three middle schools — Smilow Prep, Midtown Public Charter School, and Kirksey Middle School — serving grades 5–8, PK–8, and 6–8, respectively, with universal poverty serving as a shared context as all three schools report free/reduced lunch eligibility of roughly 99.8% to 100%. Every school is far below state averages on the MAAP assessments, holds a 0-star rating, and has seen its statewide ranking collapse to the bottom 6th percentile since 2023-24.

Kirksey Middle School is the most academically distinctive school in the group, boasting an impressive Algebra I End-of-Course pass rate of 85.7% in 2025-26 — well above the 42.7% district average for Jackson Public Schools and the 66.0% state average. Yet its grade-level math performance is the weakest of the three, with 8th grade math plunging from 28.9% to just 9.3% proficiency in one year, revealing a bifurcated math program where advanced students thrive while the broader population struggles. Midtown Public Charter School is currently the highest-ranked school in the ZIP code at the 6th percentile statewide, with its best results in 7th grade math (36.4%) and 8th grade science (40.5%), plus a dramatic one-year jump in 5th grade science from 35.6% to 59.5%. Smilow Prep has the largest enrollment (521 students) and the highest student-teacher ratio (20:1) of the group, but it leads the three schools in 5th grade ELA proficiency at 40.8%.

The most concerning trend is the consistent downward trajectory: Smilow Prep has fallen from the 25th to the 3rd percentile, Kirksey from the 28th to the 2nd, and Midtown from the 10th to the 6th over the past three years. All three exceed the state's 23.9% chronic absenteeism average, ranging from 26.0% at Smilow Prep to 32.6% at Kirksey, where roughly one in three students is chronically absent. Performance also declines as students progress, with Smilow Prep's 5th grade ELA dropping from 40.8% to 15.5% by 7th grade, and grade-level math in the upper middle grades sinking as low as 9.3% at Kirksey. These patterns suggest that while isolated bright spots exist — particularly Kirksey's advanced math track — the middle schools in 39206 face steep and compounding challenges that smaller class sizes alone have not been able to overcome.