Stanford study places CPSD in top ten percent nationally, highest in state
Special to The Clinton Courier
The Clinton Public School District has once again found itself at the top of the educational ladder in not only state rankings but in a national study.
In a recent study conducted by the Stanford Education Data Archive, state standardized ELA and math test scores for students in grades three through eight were compiled to examine student achievement in all fifty states from 2022 through 2025.
Students in the Clinton Public School District ranked in the ninety-first percentile in math and in the ninetieth percentile in reading nationally and led the State of Mississippi in performance and growth.
According to the study, Clinton students found themselves at the top spot in the Magnolia State, performing more than 1.5 grade levels above the national average.
“Out of thousands of districts nationwide, Clinton is setting the bar for excellence,” Clinton Public School District Superintendent Dr. Andy Schoggin said.
Looking at the study’s yearly growth metric, CPSD’s students gained 1.02 grade levels of learning each year during the study, outpacing both the State of Mississippi’s average (0.87) and districts that resemble Clinton’s community makeup and educational offerings (0.84) by close to twenty percent.
“These numbers don’t happen by accident,” Schoggin said. “It’s a direct result of quality campus leadership, our teachers’ focus and the steady work happening in our buildings every single day.”
The report, provided by the Stanford Education Data Archive at Stanford University, pointed out students in the Clinton Public School District have increased performance on state assessments regularly each year since 2022.
“Excellence is rarely a single spectacular performance. It isn’t built on one-off initiatives or test-prep sprints,” Dr. Schoggin said. “It happens in the daily, unglamorous work—every lesson plan, every intervention, and every high expectation set in the classroom.”
