Chalk it up to South Carolina notching its best on-time graduation rate ever and higher test scores in most subjects and grades.
Report cards for South Carolina’s schools and districts look better this year than they have since 2009, which was the first year it gave the PASS test to third- through eighth-graders.
Neil Robinson, chairman of the state Education Oversight Committee, called the 2.6 percentage point jump in the state’s graduation rate to 77.5 percent “phenomenal,” and he pointed to the majority of schools statewide that were rated “good” or “excellent” as a sea change compared with when that figure hovered at 32 percent.