Summary:
Ware Shoals, South Carolina, is home to a single middle school, Ware Shoals Elementary Middle, which serves grades 5 through 8 with a total enrollment of 238 students in the Greenwood 51 school district.
This school is clearly on an upward trajectory. Its state ranking has improved significantly, jumping from the 63rd percentile in 2023-2024 to the 69th percentile in the most recent 2025-2026 data, placing it in the top third of all middle schools in South Carolina. The school's greatest academic strength is English Language Arts (ELA), where it consistently outperforms state averages in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. For example, 8th-grade ELA proficiency reached 65.8% compared to the state's 58.9%. The school also maintains a positive learning environment, with a chronic absenteeism rate of 20.9% that is better than both the district (25.2%) and state (22.3%) averages. With a favorable student-teacher ratio of 13.6 and per-student spending of $13,955, the school appears to be allocating resources effectively, particularly toward its literacy programs.
The primary area of concern is mathematics, which shows more inconsistency than ELA. While the school outperforms the state in 6th and 7th-grade math, it lags behind in 5th and 8th grades. The most striking data point is the dramatic turnaround in 8th-grade math proficiency, which plummeted to just 15.8% in 2024-2025 (less than half the state average of 32.4%) before soaring to 42.4% in 2025-2026. This 26.6 percentage point swing is remarkable and could reflect changes in curriculum, teaching staff, or a different cohort of students. Overall, Ware Shoals Elementary Middle is a school with strong literacy instruction and a positive climate, but it faces a clear challenge in replicating its ELA success in mathematics, especially at the upper grade levels. The recent improvement in 8th-grade math is an encouraging sign that the school is actively addressing this weakness.
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