The top reported proficiency rate is 47% in English language arts. The lowest is 15% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Long Middle
Long Middle is a regular public school in Cheraw, South Carolina, serving grades six through eight within the Chesterfield 01 district. The school occupies a campus on the west side of town, separate from Cheraw’s compact historic downtown, where wide streets, a town green, and buildings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries anchor civic life. Cheraw itself is a small historic community on the Pee Dee River with a mix of residential neighborhoods, a downtown business district, and industrial areas. Its economy draws on government, the school district, and a diversified base of manufacturing and services, and the town has emphasized heritage-based development rather than rapid expansion.
Enrollment at Long Middle is evenly spread across the three grades, with a student body that is predominantly Black, with a substantial share of White students and smaller numbers of students who identify as two or more races, Hispanic, Asian, or American Indian or Alaska Native. Every student at the school qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, a measure of the economic context families here navigate. Data on students with individualized education programs and English learners was not available in the source material, so a parent may want to ask the school directly about those supports.
On state assessments, the school’s results show a clear split between math and English language arts. In ELA, the share of students scoring at proficient or above was roughly steady across grades six, seven, and eight, landing in the mid- to upper-forties in percentage terms. That places a parent in a position where roughly half of students are meeting the bar in reading and writing, and half are not. In math, the pattern is harder: proficiency rates were markedly lower than in ELA, and they declined as students moved through the grades. The sixth-grade rate was the highest of the three, while the eighth-grade rate was the lowest, meaning the challenge deepens over time. Science results were available only for sixth grade, where about a third of students were proficient. Social studies data came from an earlier school year and used different proficiency criteria, so drawing current conclusions from it is not straightforward. The state changed cut scores for ELA and science in recent years, which means year-to-year trend comparisons are uncertain, and only a single year of recent data was available for math and ELA, so there is no multi-year trajectory to examine.
Long Middle is a regular school with no charter or magnet status, and no Title I designation was reported. The district brief turned up no recent parent-relevant changes, and the comparison set within Chesterfield County contained only this one district, so no relative positioning against neighboring systems was possible. Housing in the Cheraw area is fairly affordable relative to state and national benchmarks, which may matter to families considering a move. The town’s civic anchors include Cheraw State Park, the historic district, and annual festivals, but schools here are on separate campuses, so the daily experience for middle schoolers is centered at Long Middle itself rather than in the downtown core.
What this adds up to is a school serving a community with real economic need, where the academic picture is uneven. ELA results provide a middle ground, while math is an area where the school will want to show parents what interventions or supports are in place, especially as students approach eighth grade. A family considering Long Middle may want to follow up on the math curriculum and any targeted help available, and on the missing information about special education and English learner services. The school’s setting in a small, historic town with modest growth and below-average housing costs gives it a stable, community-anchored feel, but the academic challenges in math are significant enough that they should be part of any enrollment conversation.
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