Alexander Elementary, Greenville SC

Original Research by School Decision on Alexander Elementary

Alexander Elementary is a regular public school in Greenville, South Carolina, serving students from prekindergarten through fifth grade. It is part of Greenville 01, the largest school district in the state. The school sits in a city that has seen rapid population and economic growth, with a walkable downtown anchored by Falls Park and the Swamp Rabbit Trail, and major employers including Michelin, Prisma Health, and Duke Energy. The district itself reported no recent major changes in publicly available information, so a parent would want to check directly for any new initiatives or boundary adjustments.

The student body is diverse and economically very high-need. Every student enrolled qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, a marker of concentrated poverty. Hispanic students make up the largest share, followed by Black students, then White students, with small numbers of Asian, Native American, and multiracial students. The school’s enrollment is moderate for an elementary, with a fairly even distribution across kindergarten through fourth grade and a slightly smaller fifth-grade class.

State testing results from the most recent school year paint a mixed picture. In English language arts, about half of students in grades three through five scored at the proficient level or above, a relatively consistent showing across those grades. In math, performance varied more: third-grade proficiency was somewhat lower, fourth-grade reached the half mark, and fifth-grade fell to roughly a third of students meeting the bar. Science, tested only in fourth grade, saw a little over half of students proficient. Social studies results are older, from the 2018-19 school year, when the great majority of fifth graders met the standard on the SC PASS assessment. A parent should note that South Carolina changed the cut scores for ELA and science in recent years, which makes direct year-to-year comparisons uncertain; the school’s own trend data only covers a single year, so it is not yet possible to see a trajectory.

Because Alexander Elementary serves only elementary grades, there is no graduation rate to report. The school also has no publicly available data on chronic absenteeism, discipline rates, or staffing ratios. Information on English learner and special education populations was not provided in the data available, so a parent would want to ask the school directly about supports for those groups. Similarly, no program offerings such as gifted, arts, or STEM pathways were listed, though that may simply reflect what was captured rather than what exists.

The overall picture is of a school serving a high-poverty, diverse community where academic proficiency in core subjects hovers around the halfway mark, with math in fifth grade a clear soft spot. The rapid growth of Greenville as a whole may bring both opportunity and strain to the area, but the school’s own context within a large district suggests stability. Families considering Alexander Elementary would benefit from visiting, talking to teachers about how they address the range of student needs, and asking about any enrichment or intervention programs that are not captured in the standard data.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 343%

School 43% · District 66% · ▼ 24 pts below district

▼ 10 pts below state median · ▼ 22 pts below county median

Grade 450%

School 50% · District 65% · ▼ 14 pts below district

▼ 1 pts below state median · ▼ 13 pts below county median

Grade 533%

School 33% · District 60% · ▼ 26 pts below district

▼ 11 pts below state median · ▼ 23 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 346%

School 46% · District 71% · ▼ 24 pts below district

▼ 13 pts below state median · ▼ 27 pts below county median

Grade 450%

School 50% · District 71% · ▼ 21 pts below district

▼ 12 pts below state median · ▼ 21 pts below county median

Grade 549%

School 49% · District 70% · ▼ 21 pts below district

▼ 11 pts below state median · ▼ 19 pts below county median

Science

Grade 453%

School 53% · District 63% · ▼ 10 pts below district

▲ 8 pts above state median · ▼ 9 pts below county median

Social studies

Grade 575%

School 75% · District 80% · ▼ 5 pts below district

▲ 3 pts above state median · ▼ 7 pts below county median

This schoolGreenville 01, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.