Best Public Schools in Shallotte, NC

The city of Shallotte, North Carolina, is served by three public schools: Union Elementary (K–5), Shallotte Middle (6–8), and West Brunswick High (9–12), all part of Brunswick County Schools. Every school has a free/reduced-price lunch rate above 99 percent, making this a uniformly high-poverty set of schools. Despite that, academic performance varies widely. Union Elementary is the clear standout: it ranks in the 84th percentile statewide with a 4-star rating, and it exceeds both district and state averages on every reported EOG test. Shallotte Middle is a solid mid-level performer, ranking in the 67th percentile, while West Brunswick High ranks in the 48th percentile—the lowest of the three.

Comparing the schools, Union Elementary leads not just academically but also in attendance. Its chronic absenteeism rate is 14.5%, far below the roughly 30% rates seen at Shallotte Middle and West Brunswick High. The middle school generally outperforms the state in math, reading, and science, especially in 8th-grade math (64.1% vs. 53.0% statewide), but struggles with attendance. West Brunswick High shows a different pattern: its EOC scores improved sharply year-over-year—Biology jumped from 47.2% to 57.9%, and English II from 51.4% to 59.9%—yet it still lags its district in every subject, and its 84.4% graduation rate trails both the district and state. In contrast, Union Elementary’s recent slide from a 5-star, 95th-percentile rating to a 4-star, 84th-percentile rating appears tied to specific student cohorts, with large swings in individual grade-level scores.

Key takeaways for parents: high poverty does not prevent high achievement here, as Union and Shallotte Middle demonstrate. Funding and class sizes are nearly identical across all three schools—spending per student ranges from $9,879 to $10,404 and student-teacher ratios stay between 15.8 and 16.4—so these do not explain performance gaps. The real challenge is the transition after elementary school: chronic absenteeism more than doubles from elementary to middle and high school, and West Brunswick High’s below-average graduation rate suggests the academic pipeline weakens as students advance. For parents, choosing a school in Shallotte means weighing Union’s strong elementary foundation against the attendance and secondary-level hurdles that emerge in later grades.