Meaningful National comparisons are only available through SAT and ACT scores, and these are impacted by different participation practices throughout states. For the 2017 graduating class in South Carolina the SAT was optional while the ACT was mandatory.

Fort Mill's SAT scores are above every state that has greater than 15% of its graduates take the test.

Fort Mill's ACT scores are below only two states who have higher than 85% participation rate. This percentage was chosen to compare to states where the vast majority of students took the test.

The state of South Carolina has a definition for "Students In Poverty". This is intended to be a better approximation for students whose families are in severe financial distress than the former "Free and Reduced Lunch" metric.

EOCEP Test scores are available broken out by this poverty metric, these scores are listed to the right for the Algebra 1 test.

SIP – Students in Poverty

Non-SIP – All other students

As you can see, even when breaking out Fort Mill's scores by this we are still at the top of the state.

Fort Mill rank's 79th of 83 reporting districts in terms of operational funds available to spend per student.

If Fort Mill had 8% more per student to be in line with Lancaster we could hire 126 teachers with those funds. If we were in line with Lexington 5 it would be enough money to hire 532 more teachers, a more than 50% increase than the number of teachers we have today.

Combine this fact with the exemplary test scores, and you can quickly conclude that the Fort Mill School district is doing a remarkable job educating students, particularly with the limited financial resources available.