The top reported proficiency rate is 82% in Social studies. The lowest is 44% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Edwards Elementary
Edwards Elementary serves students from prekindergarten through fifth grade in Chesterfield, a small rural town that functions as the county seat of Chesterfield County. The school sits within the Chesterfield 01 district. With an enrollment that is fully eligible for free or reduced-price meals, this is a school where economic need is widespread, not an isolated condition.
Academically, the picture varies by subject and grade. In English language arts, the share of students meeting state proficiency standards rises across the tested grades. The third-grade proficiency rate is moderate. It climbs to a stronger level in fourth grade and reaches its highest point in fifth grade, where about six in ten students scored at or above the state benchmark. Math results are more modest. Proficiency rates in math are below those in reading at every tested grade, with the highest performance in third grade and a gradual decline in fourth and fifth grades. In fourth-grade science, a little under half of students met the proficiency standard.
The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report. The state changed the cut scores for its English language arts and science assessments in the most recent testing year, which means the results for those subjects cannot be directly compared to prior years. Math cut scores remained stable, so the math results offer a clearer year-over-year comparison point, though only a single year of data was available.
The student body is majority white, with a substantial black population and a smaller share of students who identify as two or more races. Hispanic and Asian students each make up a very small part of the enrollment, and there are a handful of American Indian or Alaska Native students. The school's website may provide details on special education and English learner programs, but that information was not present in the available data.
Chesterfield itself is a place with a traditional Main Street core. Town Hall, the municipal court, and county government offices are clustered along East and West Main Street, which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The population has been essentially flat to slightly declining over recent decades. The town covers a small area and had only ten full-time municipal employees as of 2026. SC Highway 9 runs through town and connects to nearby communities such as Cheraw and Pageland. No public transit was identified, and no major new housing or commercial developments were found in searches. The median household income in the broader area is below the national figure, and the poverty rate is high. The school is the only public elementary in the district, so the neighborhood around it serves as the primary attendance zone.
The district itself did not have any recent changes or initiatives that came up in searches. That may mean things have been stable, or it may simply be that news coverage has been sparse.
For a family considering this school, the main takeaway is that Edwards Elementary is a high-poverty school in a rural, slow-growth community. Reading outcomes are stronger than math, and the gap between the two subjects is wide enough that a parent whose child struggles in math would want to understand what interventions the school offers. Because the school is the only elementary in the district and the town is small, there is essentially one pathway through the early grades here. The civic and economic context is modest, and the housing market reflects that affordability. A parent looking for a school where the community is tight-knit and the setting is rural rather than suburban or urban will find that here. A parent looking for broad academic enrichment or a rapidly improving test score trajectory will not have evidence of that in this data.
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