Summary:
Marlboro 01 is served by a single high school, Marlboro County High in Bennettsville, SC, which enrolls 987 students in grades 9-12 and faces significant challenges relative to state averages.
Marlboro County High is the only high school in the district, so its performance is the district's performance. The school has a favorable student-teacher ratio of 12.8:1 and spends $12,700 per student, yet academic outcomes lag far behind the state. For example, proficiency on English 1 (38.67%) and U.S. History (35.51%) exams is roughly 22-27 percentage points below state averages. The graduation rate stands at 75.2% versus the state's 86.7%, and the dropout rate of 5.6% is more than double the state's 2.1%. The school's state ranking has remained stagnant in the bottom 5-7% of all South Carolina high schools for three consecutive years.
The most pressing issue is chronic absenteeism: 44.0% of students are chronically absent, nearly double the state average of 22.3%. This directly undermines academic progress and graduation efforts. However, there is a bright spot in English 2, where proficiency jumped to 72.61% in the 2025-2026 school year, narrowing the gap with the state average (83.79%) significantly compared to other subjects. While the school's overall performance is concerning, this improvement suggests that targeted interventions can yield results. For parents, the key takeaway is that Marlboro County High offers small class sizes and meaningful per-student investment, but the school's biggest hurdle is getting students to attend consistently. Addressing absenteeism would likely have the greatest impact on improving test scores, graduation rates, and overall school performance.
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