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 in 2025-26. 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 d...
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. ...