By Sarah Ostergaard
Next week, families and stakeholders in LR5 will have another opportunity to take a closer look at how our schools are performing. South Carolina’s annual School Report Cards are scheduled for public release on October 15. The reports are available online through the state’s School Report Cards website (https://www.screportcards.com/) and provide information about individual schools and districts across the state, allowing users to search for specific schools, compare schools and districts, and examine historical data.
The purpose is transparency. South Carolina’s School Report Cards are designed to give parents, educators and community members a quantifiable snapshot of school performance and other characteristics.
Traditional public schools and public charter schools receive School Report Cards; private schools do not, including private schools participating in the state’s Education Scholarship Trust Fund (school vouchers) program.
Our School Report Card system has both state and federal roots. SC’s Education Accountability Act of 1998 established annual report cards for public and charter schools and districts, and the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires public reporting of educational performance. The SC Department of Education and Education Oversight Committee share responsibility for the state’s accountability and reporting system.
Each public and charter school receives an overall rating of Excellent, Good, Average, Below Average or Unsatisfactory. The rating is based on a 100-point scale, with different indicators carrying different weights depending on grade level.
Under the current 2025-2026 accountability system, elementary and middle schools are evaluated using data measuring Academic Achievement, Student Progress, Preparing for Success, School Climate and Multilingual Learners’ Progress. High schools are evaluated using data measuring Academic Achievement, Preparing for Success, Graduation Rate, High School Student Success, School Climate, College and Career Readiness, and Multilingual Learners’ Progress. The Multilingual Learners’ Progress indicator accounts for 10% of a school’s rating when it has at least 20 eligible multilingual learners. If fewer than 20, these points are redistributed: Academic Achievement and Student Progress for elementary and middle schools, and Academic Achievement and Graduation Rate for high schools.
Some of the data measured on the School Report Card are objective. State testing results and multilingual learners’ progress, for example, provide information about student performance on standardized assessments. Graduation rates provide another quantifiable outcome (but please realize that graduation rates are merely the tip of the iceberg and reflect a school’s leadership decisions, academic policies, availability of tutoring, and so much more).
Other data incorporated into the School Report Card are subjective and involve surveys intended to describe the quality of the school environment. Teacher questions on this survey ask about their perceptions of instruction, working conditions, and safety; the student questions relate to their perceptions of the social physical environment and safety. Each school must have a response rate of 80% or more or the school may lose points on its overall School Report Card score.
The School Report Card score can be a useful snapshot. How does my school compare with others in the district in factors most important to me? How does student progress compare with previous years? What does the available attendance information show? How do students and teachers describe the school environment?
Yet there are very important factors relevant to the quality of education that the School Report Card cannot tell us. A school is made up of teachers, students, families, counselors, administrators and a community. A collection of numbers cannot capture all of those relationships. It does not tell us how hard the student worked, what challenges were overcome, whether a particular teacher made a lasting difference, depth of classroom discussions, availability of textbooks, participation in extracurricular programs, accessibility of tutoring programs, teacher turnover, and more.
Also, the data collection is not static; the weighting and reporting requirements change. Each year, the Education Oversight Committee publishes the “Accountability Manual” online if you really want to understand the data behind the score. For example, parent surveys no longer factor into the School Report Card school climate data.
The School Report Card is a useful snapshot, but it is not the whole picture. Understanding what the numbers measure and what they leave out allows families and stakeholders to use the data as a starting point for asking informed questions about the schools we share.
