New report card compares Horry County students with other SC schools after year of COVID
Like districts across the country, Horry County Schools (HCS) students’ education took a hit due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but a new report shows the district out-performed the state average despite the circumstances.
In the academic achievement and college and career readiness categories of the S.C. Education Oversight Committee’s most recent report card, HCS showed promising results.
Horry County exceeds state averages
While only around 42.6% of students across the state met or exceeded expectations for their grade level in English and language arts, 48.9% of HCS students fell in the same category for the S.C. Ready exams. In math, 45.2% of HCS students met or exceeded grade-level expectations, compared to only 37.3% of South Carolina students.
The district reported around 73% of graduating students who were ready for college or a career, the report card says.
HCS performed high in many categories, but the loss of learning during the pandemic can’t be ignored. Across the state, students dealt with changing learning conditions, virtual class, and various COVID-19 precautions since the beginning of the pandemic last March. The state didn’t release the usual report card for 2020 due to the circumstances, so it’s difficult to compare the data year-to-year.
The state data released in 2019 shows that HCS dipped slightly in most categories during the pandemic. Compared to the 2021 percentage of 48.9% of students meeting or exceeding the expectations of S.C. Ready in English and language arts, 51.9% met or exceeded the same grade-level expectations in 2019. In math, that number was 45.2% in 2021 compared to 57.1% in 2019.
But HCS had excelled before the pandemic, and that was partly responsible for its students’ relative success during the pandemic, according to John Washburn, the district’s executive director of accountability and instruction.
“Our students were already performing and our teachers were already expecting a level of performance from our students and provided a level of instruction that they were able to carry through the pandemic,” Washburn said. “They were able to carry through the hybrid [learning], through the adjusted model ... they were able to absorb that and continue moving forward.”
What comes next?
Local and state school administrators have said they don’t want to focus on the results of the report card so much as how they will bounce back from a tumultuous year and get students back up to speed.
“The pandemic caused an unprecedented disruption in schooling that is being followed by a once-in-a-lifetime influx of funding,” S.C. Education Oversight Committee Executive Director Matthew Ferguson said in a release about the report cards. “We must ensure that we leverage this experience through purposeful investments that reimagine and raise the expectations for what is possible in public education across South Carolina.”
Hopes of the 2021-22 school year being more “normal” are diminishing as rising coronavirus cases have driven student quarantines and distance learning at some schools just two weeks since classes started. HCS is prioritizing keeping students in the building, but faces more than 9,000 students in quarantine currently and multiple schools that have switched to virtual learning temporarily. With another year of unexpected circumstances ahead, it’s possible further academic challenges could plague HCS and its students.
“We learned a lot ... so we now have things in place that we wouldn’t have even considered 18 months ago,” Washburn said. “I firmly believe that this is probably one of those watershed moments where we’re actually going to now see some real [change], not only Horry County Schools, but education as an institution is going to change.”
This story was originally published September 2, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
