South Carolina's graduation rate reached 86.7% in 2025, an all-time high. Twenty-seven districts posted their best rate ever. The state produced a record 54,980 graduates.

But not every district is riding that wave. Lexington 2^↗ET dropped from 87.9% in 2016 to 75.0% in 2025, a 12.9 percentage-point decline while the state improved by 4.1 points. Darlington^↗ET fell from 94.5% to 83.5%, giving up 11.0 points from what was once one of the highest rates in the state. Spartanburg 4^↗ET went from 89.4% to 78.8%, losing 10.6 points.

These are not tiny districts where a few students can swing the rate. Lexington 2's cohort is 703 students. Darlington's is 683. These are mid-sized districts with large enough cohorts for the rates to be meaningful, and for the declines to represent hundreds of students who are not graduating on time.

Lexington 2: the steepest fall

Lexington 2's decline is the most dramatic. The district graduated 87.9% of its class of 2016, slightly above the state average. By 2025, it had dropped to 75.0%, 11.7 points below the state average and among the lowest rates of any non-Corridor district.

The decline was not a single cliff. It progressed in stages: 87.9% to 82.1% (2016-2019), then a sharp drop to 70.5% in 2022, a partial recovery to 77.0% in 2023, another dip, and a slight rebound to 75.0% in 2025. The gender gap tells part of the story: male students graduated at just 69.4% in 2025, compared to 81.6% for female students, a 12.2-point gap that is the widest of any large district in the state.

Darlington: from 94.5% to 83.5%

Darlington's story is the most puzzling. The district posted a 94.5% graduation rate in 2016, one of the highest in South Carolina. By 2025, it had lost 11.0 points, landing at 83.5%.

The decline happened almost entirely between 2016 and 2022, when the rate bottomed at 80.2%. The last three years have shown partial recovery: 80.2% to 82.0% to 83.5%. But the district remains 11 points below where it started, and the recovery pace (about 1.1 points per year) would take another 10 years to return to the 2016 level.

A 683-student cohort is large enough that this is not random noise. Something changed in Darlington between 2016 and 2022 that undid years of strong graduation outcomes.

By the numbers: If Lexington 2 had maintained its 2016 graduation rate of 87.9% through 2025, approximately 91 more students would have graduated from just this year's cohort of 703. Over nine years, the cumulative shortfall is roughly 650 students.

The contrast that matters

The declining districts are not clustered geographically or demographically. Lexington 2 is a suburban district south of Columbia. Darlington is a Pee Dee district along I-95. Spartanburg 4 is an Upstate district. They do not share obvious structural characteristics that would predict synchronized decline.

What they share is timing: all three were above the state average in 2016 and are now below it. All three experienced their steepest drops between 2018 and 2022. And all three are now improving, but slowly, too slowly to return to their former levels anytime soon.

The statewide improvement narrative (seven consecutive years of gains, 27 districts at all-time highs, a record number of graduates) is accurate. But it is an average. Beneath it, these three districts represent communities where the graduation pipeline is producing fewer completers per cohort than it did a decade ago, even as the state around them improves.

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