Jackson Purchase News

There were 1,926 African American students enrolled in McCracken County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 1.2% increase from the 1,904 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that McCracken County welcomed a total of 11,471 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 16.8% of the student body to be the second most represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the 17 schools in McCracken County, Paducah Tilghman High School recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 362 students, making up 38.7% of the school's total student body.

Despite escaping some of the pandemic's educational disruptions, Kentucky's achievement gaps have remained an issue since 2019. In the eighth-grade reading assessments, for example, Hispanic students scored eight points lower than their white peers, and the gap reached 15 points in math. Black students fared even worse, falling more than 20 points behind and facing a failure rate nearly double that of their white counterparts.

School name	% of African American Students Enrolment	Total Enrollment
Concord Elementary School	8.1%	668
McCracken Open Campus School	10%	279
McCracken Regional School	30.1%	355
McCracken County High School	5.1%	2,112
Reidland Intermediate School	4.2%	236
Heath Middle School	5%	442
Hendron Lone Oak Elementary School	4.2%	543
Lone Oak Intermediate School	7%	440
Lone Oak Elementary School	10.2%	568
Lone Oak Middle School	6.5%	837
Reidland Elementary School	6.1%	641
Reidland Middle School	5.9%	356
Heath Elementary School	2.5%	513
Paducah Middle School	39.1%	717
Paducah Head Start Preschool	54.3%	276
Choices Educational Center	48.4%	128
Clark Elementary School	19.4%	649
McNabb Elementary School	58.3%	360
Morgan Elementary School	40.5%	415
Paducah Tilghman High School	38.7%	936