Best Public Schools in Selma, NC

Selma, North Carolina is served by three public schools—Thanksgiving Elementary, Selma Elementary, and Selma Middle School—which together serve students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade as part of Johnston County Public Schools. The district itself is rated 3 stars and ranks 98th out of 246 North Carolina districts. One of the most striking features in the data is that all three schools serve nearly the same population: roughly 99% of students at each school qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Despite this shared economic context, outcomes vary dramatically.

Thanksgiving Elementary is the clear standout, earning 4 stars with a statewide rank at the 75th percentile. Its average EOG proficiency is about 69.5%, far ahead of Selma Elementary's 48.8% and Selma Middle School's 41.0%. Thanksgiving Elementary also reaches 82.4% proficiency in 5th-grade science and keeps chronic absenteeism at just 9.0%. Selma Middle School is the greatest concern: it holds only 1 star, sits at the 17th percentile statewide, and more than one in three students (35.2%) is chronically absent. Selma Elementary also earns 1 star at the 23rd percentile, but it showed strong year-over-year improvement, rising from 44.4% to 48.8% overall proficiency.

Because poverty is essentially equal across all three schools, it cannot explain these differences. Chronic absenteeism, however, tracks performance almost perfectly: the higher the absence rate, the lower the achievement. Interestingly, the two lowest-performing schools have the smallest student-teacher ratios, suggesting that class size alone does not guarantee success. Science is a relative strength in all three schools and may be an underused path for building engagement and literacy. Both Selma Elementary and Selma Middle School improved their overall scores recently, yet Selma Middle School's statewide percentile fell from 22nd to 17th, meaning it is improving, but not quickly enough to keep pace with the rest of the state.