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.

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South Carolina's Boys Are Catching Up, But the Gender Gap in Graduation Remains Nearly 7 Points

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT

South Carolina's gender gap in graduation rates peaked at 12.2 percentage points in 2019. Male students graduated at 75.3%, female students at 87.4%, a chasm that was more than double the national average of roughly 5 points. One in four boys who entered ninth grade four years earlier did not finish on time.

Six years later, that gap has narrowed to 6.9 points. Male students crossed 83% for the first time in 2025, reaching 83.3%. Female students crossed 90% for the first time, reaching 90.2%. The convergence is real, but it came almost entirely from one direction: boys improved 8.0 percentage points since 2019, while girls improved 2.8.

The anatomy of the gap

The gender gap has moved in two distinct phases. From 2016 to 2019, it widened dramatically (from 9.3 to 12.2 points) as female rates held steady in the high 80s while male rates dropped from 78.1% to 75.3%. The 2018-2019 period was the nadir for boys: three consecutive years below 76%.

Since 2019, the pattern reversed. Male students gained ground in every single year, climbing from 75.3% to 83.3%, a continuous six-year improvement streak. Female students also improved, but at a slower pace, from 87.4% to 90.2%.

By the numbers: 83.3% of South Carolina's male students graduated in 2025, up from 75.3% in 2019. That improvement translated to roughly 2,500 additional male graduates per year compared to the 2019 rate applied to the current cohort of 32,252.

District gender gaps: where it is widest

The statewide 6.9-point gap masks much wider gaps at the district level. Among districts with at least 300 students in the graduation cohort, Lexington 2^↗ and Orangeburg^↗ each posted 12.2-point gender gaps in 2025, matching the state's 2019 peak. At Orangeburg, female students graduated at 86.5% while male students managed only 74.3%.

Richland 1^↗ had a 10.6-point gap. York 3 (Rock Hill)^↗ showed 9.8. Spartanburg 5^↗, despite a strong overall rate of 91.1%, had a 9.3-point gap between its female (95.8%) and male (86.4%) graduates.

Even districts celebrated for their overall performance carry significant gender gaps. Greenville^↗ had a 6.0-point gap, Charleston^↗ 6.9. Horry^↗ at 6.1. The pattern holds across geography, demographics, and performance level: wherever you look in South Carolina, boys graduate at lower rates than girls.

What closing looks like

At the current pace of narrowing (roughly 1 point per year since 2019) the gender gap would reach parity around 2032. But that assumes boys continue gaining at their recent rate, which is unlikely to hold as the improvements get harder. The jump from 75% to 83% often comes from better credit recovery programs, expanded summer school, and improved ninth-grade transition supports. The jump from 83% to 90% typically requires reaching students with deeper barriers: behavioral issues, attendance problems, disconnection from school culture.

The boys who remain below the graduation line in 2025 are, by definition, the hardest to reach. South Carolina's 6.9-point gender gap is narrower than it was, but it is still 2 points wider than the national average and represents roughly 5,400 male students who did not graduate on time in the class of 2025.