The Mississippi Department of Education has released its report concerning the 2023-24 graduation and dropout rate. And although Yazoo County schools ranked within the state’s overall average, Yazoo City schools ranked as the state’s lowest graduation rate and was also ranked one of the highest with its dropout rate.
The Mississippi Department of Education recently announced the state’s 2023-24 school-year graduation rate was 89.2 percent with a dropout rate of 8.5 percent. Locally, the Yazoo City Municipal School District ranked last place with the bottom ten districts with the lowest graduation rate of 66.4 percent.
Concerning the state’s dropout rate, the city school district was considered the highest dropout rate with 28.3 percent.
The state’s latest report comes five months after the community celebrated the city school district earning “C” rating, which had not been accomplished since the state takeover in 2019. Improving from a failing status, the city schools showed impressive increases in its reading, math, history and science proficiency levels.
For Alderman Macklyn Austin, the state’s latest report adds to his concern over the current graduation rate for Yazoo City students.
“I have voiced my concern with the city students’ graduation rate publicly,” he said. “I have had several parents contact with those same concerns. I feel that there is not a lot of transparency from the district to the parents or the community. If there are many students struggling, communicate that. Offer insight on tutoring or other counseling options. I have attempted to reach out to the schools and have not heard anything back from them.”
Yazoo County Schools
The Yazoo County School District ranked in line with the state’s overall average concerning its graduation rate. The county schools were ranked with an 88.4 percent graduation rate and an 11.6 percent dropout rate.
Statewide Level
On a statewide level, compared to 2022-23, MDE reports that the statewide dropout rate stayed the same while the graduation rate decreased slightly by .2 percentage points. Among students with disabilities, the graduation rate decreased by 4.8 percentage points, and the dropout rate increased by 2.3 percentage points.
MDE also reports, in 2020-21, passing requirements were waived due to COVID-19 for high school end-of-year assessments in Algebra I, English II, Biology and U.S. History. The waivers had a positive impact on the graduation rate, and that impact was expected to diminish for the 2023-24 school year. Mississippi’s graduation rate exceeds the latest national rate of 86.6% percent from 2021-22 reported by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Historically, Mississippi’s public-school students have achieved continued improvement. The statewide graduation rate was 74.5 percent in 2013, and the statewide dropout rate has decreased from 13.9 percent in 2013.
