Summary:
The city of Saint Stephen, South Carolina is home to three public schools: Timberland High School, St. Stephen Elementary School, and St. Stephen Middle School, all of which serve the Berkeley 01 school district. While the elementary school shows some promising academic performance, the middle and high schools face significant challenges in terms of test scores, resource allocation, and chronic absenteeism.
St. Stephen Middle School stands out with the lowest student-teacher ratio at 9.8, indicating a potentially more personalized learning environment. However, the school's performance on standardized tests is relatively low compared to the district and state averages, with only 14.9% of 6th graders proficient in math in 2024-2025. In contrast, St. Stephen Elementary School has the highest per-student spending at $18,268 and relatively strong performance on English Language Arts tests, with 51.7% of 3rd graders proficient in 2024-2025.
Timberland High School has a 85.4% four-year graduation rate and a 2.3% dropout rate, which are positive metrics. However, the school's proficiency rates in Algebra 1/Mathematics (44.63%) and English 1 (39.71%) in 2024-2025 were much lower than the district and state averages. Additionally, all three schools in the district had a high chronic absenteeism rate of 22.5% in 2023-2024, which is a concerning issue that may be impacting student learning and achievement.
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