Berry Shoals Elementary

Berry Shoals Elementary is a public school in Duncan, SC, serving 476 students in grades PK–5 as part of the highly regarded Spartanburg 05 district, which ranks in the top 16% of districts statewide.

While the district overall is strong, Berry Shoals currently holds a 2-star rating and ranks 405th out of 649 elementary schools in South Carolina—placing it in the 38th percentile. This makes it the lowest-ranked school among its nearby district peers, including River Ridge Elementary (4 stars, 86th percentile) and Reidville Elementary (4 stars, 86th percentile). Academic proficiency lags behind district and state averages in nearly every subject and grade level. The most significant gap is in 4th-grade science, where only 35.8% of students are proficient—nearly 16 points below the state average and about half the rate of nearby schools like River Ridge (62.5%) and Reidville (67.3%).

One of the most striking findings is a large gender gap: male students perform at the 53rd percentile statewide, while female students rank at just the 22nd percentile—a 31-point difference that is unusual for elementary schools. Hispanic students are a bright spot, performing at the 53rd percentile, matching male students and outperforming other subgroups. The school also enjoys a favorable student-to-teacher ratio of 11.7:1, lower than most nearby schools, yet this resource advantage hasn't translated into higher achievement. For parents, this suggests the school has solid foundations—small class sizes and a supportive district—but may need targeted interventions, particularly for female students and in science instruction, to bring performance in line with its high-achieving neighbors.