One in Four Students With Disabilities Won't Graduate on Time in South Carolina

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Students with disabilities in South Carolina graduate at 61.6%. The state average is 86.7%. The gap between them (25.1 percentage points) is the second widest in the state's data, behind only youth in foster care at 44.8%.

The gap has narrowed. In 2016, it was 30.5 points, with the special education rate at 52.1%. Over nine years, students with disabilities gained 9.5 percentage points, closing the distance by about a point per year. That pace is consistent and meaningful. It represents hundreds of additional graduates from a cohort of 8,381 students.

It is also, at the current trajectory, a 25-year project to reach parity.

The math of the gap

The special education graduation gap has narrowed in every era of the data: pre-2018, post-2018 methodology change, through COVID, and after. In 2016, the gap was 30.5 points. It compressed to 26.2 by 2019, widened slightly to 26.7 during the COVID years (2021), then resumed closing: 25.7 in 2022, 25.3 in 2024, and 25.1 in 2025.

Both lines are moving upward. All students went from 82.6% to 86.7%. Special education students went from 52.1% to 61.6%. But the special education line moves slower. In the last three years, all students gained 2.9 points; special education students gained 3.5. The gap is closing, but at a pace measured in fractions of a point per year.

By the numbers: 8,381 students with disabilities entered South Carolina's class of 2025 graduation cohort. About 5,163 graduated on time. The remaining 3,218 did not, more than the total enrollment of most SC school districts.

District variation tells a different story

The statewide 61.6% rate obscures enormous district-level variation. Among districts with at least 100 special education students in their cohort, rates in 2025 ranged from 44.3% at Orangeburg^↗ to 80.6% at Anderson 1^↗.

Five districts had special education rates below 55%: Orangeburg (44.3%), Limestone Charter Association (49.6%), Darlington^↗ (50.0%), Oconee (50.4%), and Lexington 2^↗ (52.9%). At these rates, roughly half of students with disabilities are not graduating on time.

At the top, several districts demonstrate that much higher rates are achievable. Anderson 1 graduated 80.6% of its special education students. York 4 (Fort Mill)^↗ reached 74.6%. Horry^↗ hit 70.1%. Greenville^↗, with the largest special education cohort in the state at 856 students, posted 69.9%, up from 50.8% in 2018, a 19.1 percentage-point improvement.

Greenville's trajectory is particularly instructive. The district improved its special education rate by 19 points in seven years while growing its special education cohort from 744 to 856 students. The improvement was not achieved by narrowing the denominator. It was achieved by graduating more students from a larger pool.

What 38.4% failure looks like

A 61.6% graduation rate means 38.4% of students with disabilities did not earn a diploma within four years. Some of those students will graduate in a fifth year. Some will earn alternative credentials. Many will not finish at all.

South Carolina's Employability Credential (an alternative pathway for students with significant cognitive disabilities) provides a route to completion outside the traditional diploma. But it does not count toward the four-year graduation rate, and it serves a narrow subset of the special education population. The bulk of non-graduates are students with learning disabilities, emotional disabilities, and other conditions that should not be incompatible with diploma attainment.

The 25-point gap is not a reflection of disability severity. It is a reflection of a system that has improved for students with disabilities at roughly the same absolute pace as for all students (gaining about one point per year) but started from so far behind that decades of improvement would be needed to reach parity.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Anderson 1 - EdTribune SC - South Carolina Education Data

One in Four Students With Disabilities Won't Graduate on Time in South Carolina

The math of the gap

District variation tells a different story

What 38.4% failure looks like