Summary:
Zip code 29609 is home to exactly one high school, Wade Hampton High, which serves grades 9-12 with a substantial enrollment of 1,790 students in the Greenville, SC area.
Wade Hampton High is a solidly performing school with a consistent 4-star state rating, though its ranking has slipped slightly from 43rd to 57th statewide over the past three years. The school's greatest strength is in humanities: it significantly outperforms state averages in U.S. History (79.9% proficient vs. 62.57% statewide) and English 1 (72.63% vs. 60.91% statewide), while English 2 proficiency is also above the state mark. However, the school faces a critical challenge in mathematics—Algebra 1 proficiency collapsed from 83.76% in 2024-2025 to just 22.59% in 2025-2026, a staggering 61-point drop that places it nearly 42 points below the state average and 37 points below its own district, Greenville 01. This dramatic decline, combined with a 57-point gap between its best subject (U.S. History) and worst subject (Algebra 1), suggests a potential imbalance in instructional focus or a cohort-specific issue that demands urgent attention.
Another area of concern is chronic absenteeism, which stands at 30.6%—more than 8 percentage points above both the district and state averages, meaning nearly one in three students is chronically absent. Despite this, the school's graduation rate of 87.4% slightly exceeds the state average, and its dropout rate of 2.1% is right at the state norm. With per-student spending of $12,105 and a student-teacher ratio of 18.3:1, the school has reasonable resources, but the combination of high absenteeism and the Algebra 1 crisis suggests that proactive interventions are needed to reverse the downward ranking trend and address the math proficiency gap.
Thank you for your feedback!