Anderson County

The six schools in Anderson County serve students from prekindergarten through grade 12, with four elementary schools, a middle school and a high school; together they enroll 3,633 students. Ezra Sparrow Early Childhood Center serves PK–K and has no tested-grade results in the data. The most important finding for families is that elementary results vary sharply by school, especially in math: fourth-grade scores range from 33% at Saffell Street Elementary School to 69% at Robert B. Turner Elementary School, a 36-point spread.

Turner stands out academically among the elementary schools: it was at or above the state in all ten of its 2025–26 test-grade results and averaged 17 points above state results. Saffell was at the bottom overall, averaging 4 points below the state, though it beat state results in science, social studies and editing/mechanics. Emma B. Ward Elementary School averaged 6 points above the state, with strengths in fifth-grade writing and social studies, but its third-grade math result was 32%, 11 points below the state. At the secondary level, Anderson County High School was 14 points above the state in math and 18 points above in reading; Anderson County Middle School was 9 points ahead in seventh-grade math and eighth-grade social studies.

Recent score changes are mixed rather than showing a broad rise or fall: across 45 matched school results, scores increased by 18 points in total, while state results were unchanged. Saffell gained an average of 8 points across its matched results, while Turner fell by an average of 6; SchoolDigger’s three-year ranking history nevertheless places Turner high, at the 87th percentile, and shows Saffell rising 10 percentile points to the 37th. Context also differs: student-teacher ratios range from 12.9 at Ward to 17.8 at the high school, and 2024–25 free/reduced lunch eligible figures range from 45% at Turner to 64% at Saffell. The middle and high schools had chronic absenteeism of 25% and 26%, above the 24% state rate, despite being above the state in most reported subjects; these figures describe different aspects of each school, not a cause-and-effect relationship.