Mississippi Department of Education releases 2025-26 accountability grades under new standards

"I'm very pleased to say that for the 2025-26 school year, even with this increase in expectations, 53.9% of our schools and 50.7% of our districts earned a grade of A or B," said r. Lance Evans, Mississippi's superintendent of education, at a briefing ahead of the report's release.

Districts with the highest point totals included Bay St. Louis-Waveland, Clinton, Long Beach, Ocean Springs, and Enterprise.

"31 of the state's 148 school districts earned an A rating," Evans said. "As we were setting these accountability, as we were increasing these standards and setting them, our preliminary projections were that we would actually have 31 A districts."

Earlier numbers released by MDE assesssing student performance in English Lange Arts and math in 3rd through 8th grade along with science in grades 5 and 8, and in high school English II, Algebra I and Biology. show mixed results with math and ELA, with growth in science. 

The report also includes grades for Districts of Transformation, which are school districts under state control because of chronic academic issues or issues with finances, operations or governance. Several showed continued progress, but others are still struggling. 

“Improving districts that have faced challenges for many years takes time, and there are no quick fixes,” Evans wrote in a statement. “Holmes County Consolidated and Noxubee County school districts have shown what sustained effort can produce. I am confident that all Districts of Transformation will continue to make progress toward higher student outcomes over the long term.”

Yazoo City in particular has sustained an F rating for the past two school years. John Ferrell, Chief of School and District Transformation, said they'd like to push for more support there. 

"One of the things that we're doing along with the academic office is putting more coach supports in there working along with [high-quality instructional materials] to build teacher capacity kind of to help that process and to help success in that district," Ferrell said. 

The standards are based on several metrics, including 3rd through 8th grade student proficiency and growth rates from state assessments of English Language Arts and math, four-year graduation rates, ACT and SAT results, and several other criteria. 

The standards have shifted upwards this year, though. The new standards, based on impact data, were developed by a task force and finalized those standards in November of 2025. 

"It is in state law that standards be increased when proficiency rates exceed 75% or when 65% of schools and districts earn a grade of B or higher," Evans said. "Mississippi did meet that threshold in 2023 with 74% of schools and 71% of our districts earning and a rating of A or B."

Essentially, it means that the cut to make a certain grade has been bumped up. 

"For example, the cut score for an 'A' grade for elementary and middle schools (700-point schools) will increase from 442 to 457 points, while for high schools (1000-point schools) it will increase from 754 to 769 points," a 2025 release from MDE reads. 

Because the grades are being issued under different standards, they're not directly comparable with previous years' scores. 

"Your district or school or district could have performed as well as they did in the previous year but received a lower accountability rating," said Evans. "Again, that's another reason why you do not need to compare your 2024-25 to your 2025-26 by letter grade." 

Evans listed a couple metrics that could be used to assess progress across the different standards. 

"I would look at a percentage of students scored proficient, compare it to two years," said Evans. "I would look at graduation rates, I would looked at dual enrollment performance."