Dillon High

Dillon High serves approximately 804 students in grades 9-12 in Dillon, South Carolina, a community where 100% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch, reflecting a high-poverty student body within the Dillon 04 district.

There's encouraging news on graduation: the rate jumped from 75.1% to 84.5% in just one year, now nearly matching the state average of 86.7%. However, the school still faces serious challenges. The dropout rate of 5.6% is more than double the state average (2.1%) and far higher than nearby Latta High (1.7%) and Lake View High (0.3%). Chronic absenteeism also remains a concern at 36.2%—well above the state's 22.3%—though it has improved dramatically from 49.1% two years ago. Academically, proficiency rates lag the state on key tests: just 32% of students passed English 1 (state: 60.9%) and 36.6% passed U.S. History (state: 62.6%). Interestingly, English 2 proficiency is much stronger at 72.4%, which may reflect that students who persist to that level are a more select group.

Comparing Dillon to Latta High—just 7.5 miles away—is revealing. Latta spends slightly less per student ($11,917 vs. $12,443) yet achieves better results across nearly every metric: a higher graduation rate (87.5%), a much lower dropout rate, and chronic absenteeism of only 20.2%. This suggests that school-level practices, not just funding, drive success. Within the same district, Lake View High also outperforms Dillon on most measures, with a notably lower student-teacher ratio (12.8 vs. 16.4). The good news is that Dillon is trending upward—attendance is improving, and U.S. History scores rose from 23.5% to 36.6% in two years. The most urgent priorities remain reducing dropouts and chronic absenteeism, which likely fuel the academic gaps.