Education
District sees gains in scores on state tests
State standardized test results released this week show there was an overall increase in performance across Georgetown County School District.
SCReady tests students in third through eighth grades on English and math. Almost 60 percent of state students met or exceeded the standards for English, and 44 percent met or exceeded math standards. The state Department of Education has a goal for 75 percent of students to test at or above grade level by 2030.
In Georgetown County, 47 percent of students met the English standard and 37 percent met the math standard.
Waccamaw area schools consistently perform at or near the 75 percent goal in English as all scores increased in 2025. The greatest decrease in Waccamaw school scores was in third grade math by 11.7 percentage points.
Deputy Superintendent Sherri Forrest told the Georgetown County School Board from 2022 to 2025 the district has closed the gap with the state scores in English.
“You will see that we are a little bit below, but you also will see that we are trending, pretty close to the same, as South Carolina as a whole,” she said. “We have a couple of grades, they still increased a little but maybe not as high as some others.”
Getting on the same level as state performance is a goal for the district. Forrest said her next step is to “dive deeper” into the numbers.
Board Member Scott DuBose did his homework prior to the meeting. He said he looked at how students performed on the tests as they moved from one grade to the next.
“I’d love to see the deeper dive, and I want to see it broken down by school,” DuBose said. “I always have a hard time, as a board member, knowing what conclusion to draw from the general data because all the trend lines are positive. But depending on how you run the numbers, they’re not.”
The district saw the greatest improvement in seventh-grade English. Over half, 52.6 percent, met or exceeded English standards, an increase of almost 13 percentage points from last year’s scores.
Eighth-graders across the district struggled in math. Just over a quarter, 25.9 percent, met or exceeded the standards, a 6 point drop.
At Waccamaw Middle, 66 percent of eighth-graders met or exceeded math standards, down 2 percentage points from last year.
At the Waccamaw Schools, most students already meet the state’s 2030 goal in all but eighth-grade English, where 73.2 percent meet or exceed the standard.
Fifth grade math, 76.6 percent, also meets the standard. Third grade math scores met the standard last year, but fell nearly 12 points this year, to 71 percent.
The school district recognized Waccamaw Middle and Waccamaw Intermediate over the summer for being the best of their kind in the state after reviewing assessment data and the state report cards issued last year. Both schools received banners to display from the district.
Travis Klatka, principal of Waccamaw Intermediate, said he was excited when he saw the embargoed scores last month.
“They’ve put a lot of hard work and effort into it. To see the results, I was proud of everyone,” he said.
Scores increased in all grades in both subjects, with sixth grade math scores up nearly 10 points to 68.3 percent meeting or exceeding standards.
Klatka isn’t sure why math scores are low across the state but he said every school and student is different. Math is particularly difficult for some students, he said, because it’s a subject that continues to build in each grade. For example, if a third-grader struggled in math concepts that may continue in fourth grade.
“Math is a little bit more difficult for some,” he said.
The state board created the Palmetto Math Project to help districts reach the statewide goal. If 50 percent or more of students do not meet or exceed math standards in fifth and eighth grades, it is considered an “underperforming” school by the state.
“This was just to confirm that, certainly, our work is nowhere near finished,” Superintendent Bethany Giles told the school board. “We do celebrate the positive trends, and we recognize that there are some gaps and some areas we need to focus on. But we will not lessen our celebration for the gains we have made.”
