Summary:
Zip code 38016 in Cordova, Tennessee, is served by a single high school, Cordova High School, which enrolls 2,251 students in grades 9 through 12 as part of the Memphis-Shelby County Schools district. As the only high school in the area, there are no within-zip comparisons to make, so the picture below focuses on how Cordova High School compares to its district and to Tennessee statewide averages.
Cordova High School is a large school that has shown modest improvement in recent years. Its state ranking moved from 325th (2023-2024) to 316th (2024-2025) to 294th (2025-2026), yet it still holds a 1-star rating and sits in the bottom quarter of Tennessee high schools. The school outperforms its district in most tested subjects—Algebra I, Algebra II, U.S. History, English II, and Geometry—but trails the state in all seven core subjects. For example, Algebra I proficiency is 18.2% at Cordova High School versus 32.3% statewide, while English II, the school's strongest subject, is 42.4% proficient compared to 58.1% statewide. Graduation rate is 88.2%, above the district's 84.1% but below the state's 90.5%, and the dropout rate of 9.1% is better than the district's 14.4% but worse than the state's 6.7%.
Perhaps the most striking concerns are chronic absenteeism, at 38.9%—more than double the state rate of 18.3%—and weak performance in foundational 9th-grade courses. English I (18.5%) and Algebra I (18.2%) proficiency are the lowest subjects, and even accelerated students fall far short: 9th graders taking Algebra II are only 38.3% proficient versus 88.9% statewide. On a positive note, the school has seen major year-over-year gains in Algebra II (+11.6 points), U.S. History (+11.5 points), and Geometry (+10.4 points), though these reflect different cohorts of students. Without data on free/reduced lunch rates or student-teacher ratio, the full picture is incomplete, but per-student spending is $13,024.
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