COLUMBIA, S.C. — Wednesday the South Carolina Department of Education launched an online tool that allows public to access presented in five different sections.
With the tool people can see how each school district is performing in comparison to factors such as poverty rate, teacher to student ratio, and how each district is using their taxpayer dollars.
All data is from the 2021-2022 school year.
One district that stood out when comparing the percent of districts students in poverty and test scores was Fairfield County.
The superintendent of the Fairfield district Dr. J.R. Green explains why.
"Our motto here is excellent though team work, and you may ask why is that so important? I remind people the trajectory of a young person is not the sole responsibility of the school system," Dr. Green said.
His school district contains 87% of students in poverty, the seventh highest percentile in the state. When comparing other districts with similar a percentile of students in poverty, Fairfield is performing roughly 10% higher.
Teamwork and resources are, according to Dr. Green, why Fairfield contains a high percentage of students living impoverished while still performing above the dashboards line of regression.
"Because of the funding formally in South Carolina, the overwhelming amount of operational revenue the school district receives comes from industry. And we have one huge industry in Fairfield county that probably contributes about one out of every two operational dollar that we receive," Dr. Green explained.
That revenue Fairfield receives from industry puts the district in a position where , according to the dashboard, revenues per student is almost double the state average, students per teacher is the lowest in the state, and test scores are higher than schools with similar poverty rates.
"The way we move the needle as a state is to start looking at some of these institutions who are doing an effective job working through the most difficult circumstances," Dr. Green concluded.
Click here to access the dashboard.