NATCHEZ — The Natchez-Adams School District received a ‘D’ grade for the second year in a row by the Mississippi Department of Education.

MDE released accountability grades Tuesday afternoon for the 2018-2019 school year for all school districts in the state.

The report shows the school district made slight improvement compared to the 2017-2018 school year but not enough to reach a ‘C’ grade.

Scores from school districts in Southwest Mississippi lagged behind much of the state. Four of 19 failing school districts in the state are from the region. Wilkinson County Schools, Jefferson County Schools, Amite County Schools and Claiborne County Schools all received an ‘F’ grade for the 2017-2018 school year.

Nearly three-quarters of schools and 70% of school districts statewide received a ‘C’ grade or higher, a news release from MDE said.

The Franklin County School District received a ‘B’ grade. The Copiah County School District received a ‘C’ grade and the Vicksburg Warren County School District received a ‘D’ grade.

In the Natchez-Adams School District, two schools — Robert Lewis Magnet School and Morgantown Middle School — improved a letter grade and two schools — Frazier Elementary and West Elementary — dropped a letter grade compared to the 2017-2018 school year.

Robert Lewis Magnet School improved from a ‘D’ grade to a ‘C’ grade and Morgantown Middle School improved from an ‘F’ grade to a ‘D’ grade.

Both Frazier and West elementary schools dropped from a ‘C’ to a ‘D’ grade this year.

Natchez High School and Natchez Freshman Academy scored a ‘D,’ unchanged from last year.

In previous years, MDE has awarded a separate grade for the Natchez Early College Academy. For the past two school years, NECA has received a ‘B’ grade from MDE. This year scores from NECA have been factored into the Natchez High School accountability grade.

“MDE has made the decision that early college scores in the state will be included with the home school which is Natchez High School in our case,” NASD Interim Public Relations Coordinator Tony Fields said.

Mississippi’s A-F accountability system evaluates how well schools and districts are performing each year, the MDE news release said. Accountability grades are based, in part, on how well students perform and progress from year to year on the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP) tests for English language arts (ELA) and Mathematics. These tests are aligned to the Mississippi College and Career Ready Standards and are administered annually to students in grades 3-8 and in high school.