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Elections Information

Election dates •2015 elections • Candidate filing dates •Finance reporting •Poll opening and closing times

A total ofoneMississippi school district amongAmerica's largest school districts by enrollment held an election forone seat on November 3, 2015.

Jackson County School District served 9,518 K-12 students during the 2012-2013 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.^[1] Click on the district name for more information on the district and its school board elections.

Trends in Mississippi school board elections

See also:School boards in session: 2015 in brief

The 2015 school board elections held inMississippi'slargest school districts saw fewer candidates run per seat compared to the 2014 school board elections. One school district held an election for one seat in 2015. In 2014, five districts held elections for five seats. The one seat up for election in 2015 was unopposed. In 2014, one of the five seats on the ballot went unopposed. No newcomers were elected to the school board in 2015, but in 2014, newcomers took 40.00 percent of the seats on the ballot.

The following sections analyzecompetitiveness andincumbency advantage in Mississippi's school board elections. These districts did not utilizeprimary or runoff elections. Winners only had to receive aplurality, or relative majority, of votes to secure a seat. All of the school board elections held in the state in 2014 and 2015 werenonpartisan.

Details of the data discussed here can be found in thetable below.

Competitiveness

In 2015, one incumbent ran for one seat on the ballot, and no one challenged him. In 2014, there was an average of 1.80 candidates running per seat. Nine candidates ran for five seats. One of those seats was unopposed.

Incumbency advantage

See also:School board incumbency analysis: 2015 in brief Because only one incumbent ran for one seat in 2015, there was a 100.00 percent incumbency retention rate that year. In 2014, 75.00 percent of incumbents who ran for re-election retained their seats. Four of the five incumbents whose terms were up for re-election ran to keep their seats, and three of them won. All three defeated challengers to win their bids for re-election. The one seat that went unopposed that year went to a newcomer. The map below details the success rates for incumbents who ran in the 2015 school board elections that were held in thelargest school districts by enrollment in the U.S. The map above details the success rates of incumbent who ran to retain their school board seats in the largest school districts in each state. States depicted in gray did not hold school board elections.

Data table

The table below displays the statistics for school board elections in Mississippi's largest school districts from 2014 to 2015.

State profile

Presidential voting pattern

See also:Presidential voting trends in Mississippi

Mississippivoted Republican in all seven presidential elections between 2000 and 2024.

Pivot Counties (2016)

Ballotpedia identified 206 counties that voted forDonald Trump (R) in 2016 after voting forBarack Obama (D) in 2008 and 2012. Collectively, Trump won thesePivot Counties by more than 580,000 votes. Of these 206 counties, two are located in Mississippi, accounting for 0.97 percent of the total pivot counties.^[2]

Pivot Counties (2020)

In2020, Ballotpedia re-examined the 206 Pivot Counties to view their voting patterns following that year's presidential election. Ballotpedia defined those won by Trump won asRetained Pivot Counties and those won byJoe Biden (D) asBoomerang Pivot Counties. Nationwide, there were 181 Retained Pivot Counties and 25 Boomerang Pivot Counties. Mississippi had two Retained Pivot Counties, 1.10 of all Retained Pivot Counties.

More Mississippi coverage on Ballotpedia

• Elections in Mississippi
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Academic performance

Education terms
For more information on education policy terms, seethis article.
School board elections portal Glossary of education terms School choice on the ballot Education on the ballot

See also:Public education in Mississippi

NAEP scores

See also:NAEP scores by state

The National Center for Education Statistics provides state-by-state data on student achievement levels in mathematics and reading in theNational Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The chart below presents the percentage of fourth and eighth grade students that scored at or above proficient in reading and math during the 2012-2013 school year. Compared to three neighboring states (Alabama,Arkansas, andLouisiana),Mississippi's scores were the lowest nearly across the board.^[3]

Graduation, ACT and SAT scores

See also:Graduation rates by groups in state andACT and SAT scores in the United States

The following table shows the graduation rates and average composite ACT and SAT scores for Mississippi and surrounding states during the 2012-2013 school year. All statements made in this section refer to that school year.^[3][4][5]

In the United States, public schools reported graduation rates that averaged to about 81.4 percent. About 54 percent of all students in the country took the ACT, while 50 percent reported taking the SAT. The average national composite scores for those tests were 20.9 out of a possible 36 for the ACT and 1,498 out of a possible 2,400 for the SAT.^[6]

Mississippi schools reported agraduation rate of 75.5 percent during the 2012-2013 school year, which was second-lowest among its neighboring states.

In Mississippi, more students took the ACT than the SAT in 2013, earning anaverage ACT score of 18.9.

Dropout rate

See also:Public high school dropout rates by state for a full comparison of dropout rates by group in all states

The high schoolevent dropout rate indicates the proportion of students who were enrolled at some time during the school year and were expected to be enrolled in grades 9–12 in the following school year but were not enrolled by October 1 of the following school year. Students who have graduated, transferred to another school, died, moved to another country, or who are out of school due to illness are not considered dropouts. The average public high school event dropout rate for the United States remained constant at 3.3 percent for both school year 2010–11 and school year 2011–12. The event dropout rate for Mississippi was lower than the national average at 3.2 percent in the 2010-2011 school year, and 3.2 percent in the 2011-2012 school year.^[7]

See also

Mississippi	School Boards	News and Analysis
Public education in Mississippi List of school districts in Mississippi	School board elections, 2015 List of school board elections in 2015 Candidate filing deadlines, 2015 Campaign finance deadlines, 2015	Incumbency no guarantee of success in Nov. 3 school board elections (November 6, 2015) What happened in Nov.'s top board elections? (November 4, 2015)

Footnotes