Charleston 01
A 2017 Reclassification Cut South Carolina's Native American Student Count in Half, on Paper
South Carolina's public schools enrolled 4,450 students who are Native American in the 2015-16 school year. By 2025-26, that number had fallen to 2,244, a loss of 49.6%. No other racial group in the s...
Multiracial Students Are Now SC's Fourth-Largest Racial Group
Correction (May 14, 2026): An earlier version stated Berkeley 01 had the highest multiracial share among districts with at least 1,000 students, followed by Dorchester 02 and Horry 01. Two smaller dis...
SC's Coastal Growth Engine Just Stalled
For four straight years, South Carolina's three largest coastal districts grew in lockstep. Berkeley added students as housing developments spread through the I-26 corridor. Horry rode the Myrtle Beac...
South Carolina's White-Black Graduation Gap Peaked During COVID. Now It's Narrowing.
Black students in South Carolina graduated at 83.5% in 2025, the highest rate the state has recorded for the subgroup, up from 78.1% four years earlier. That 5.4-point four-year gain has driven the wh...
South Carolina's English Learner Population Surged 39% in Seven Years
Seven years ago, roughly one in 14 South Carolina public school students was classified as Limited English Proficient. By 2024-25, the ratio had crossed one in 10. The state added 22,137 students to t...
Black Enrollment Fell 15% in South Carolina
South Carolina's total public school enrollment grew by 32,220 students between 2015 and 2026, a 4.3% gain. Black enrollment fell by 41,256 over the same period, a 14.9% decline. The state added stude...
Nearly Half of SC Districts Hit Record Lows
Richland 01 enrolled 21,468 students this year. That is fewer than any year since at least 2014-15, a loss of 3,088 from its 12-year peak. It is not alone. Thirty-four of South Carolina's 81 school di...
One in Seven SC Students Is Now Hispanic
In Saluda, a small town west of Columbia where the school district has added 242 students over the past decade, nearly half the 2,600 enrolled children are Hispanic or Latino. Six bilingual graduates ...
South Carolina's Recovery Is Over
South Carolina spent four years clawing back every student it lost to COVID. It recovered 148% of its pandemic losses, surpassing its pre-pandemic enrollment and reaching a record 796,780 students in ...
White Students Fell Below 50% Seven Years Ago. The Gap Keeps Widening.
In 2019, for the first time in the state's history, white students dropped below half of South Carolina's public school enrollment. That crossing was not a one-year anomaly. It was a hinge. In the sev...