Sumter 01
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...
Shaw Air Force Base Can't Save Sumter's Schools
Shaw Air Force Base pumps $2.05 billion a year into the Sumter region. It supports 9,404 direct jobs and another 5,466 indirect ones. More than 31,000 active-duty personnel, military families, and ret...
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...
How a Small College Built SC's Sixth-Largest School District
Erskine College is a 187-year-old liberal arts school in Due West, South Carolina, a town of fewer than 3,000 people. In 2017, it declared itself a charter school authorizer, a move permitted under st...
Six SC Districts Have Declined Every Year for 11 Straight Years
McCormick 01 enrolled 483 students in 2025-26. That is roughly 37 per grade. The district has lost students every single year for 11 consecutive years, shedding 42.2% of its enrollment since 2014-15. ...