Slater Marietta Elementary, Marietta SC

Original Research by School Decision on Slater Marietta Elementary

Slater Marietta Elementary sits in northern Greenville County, serving the two unincorporated communities of Slater and Marietta. The school is a regular public elementary school serving prekindergarten through fifth grade, and it is the only school in its immediate area for that age span. The student body is small, as elementary schools go, and the composition reflects the local population: largely white, with a measurable Hispanic share and very small numbers of Black students and students of other races. Every student enrolled qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, a marker that the school serves a community of very high economic need.

Academically, state testing results from the most recent school year show a mixed picture. In mathematics, roughly half of students in grades three through five scored at the proficient level or above, with fourth grade slightly ahead of third and fifth. In English language arts, the pattern is different: proficiency rates rise clearly across the grades, from just over half of third graders to about two-thirds of fifth graders. That upward trajectory in reading is a real strength of the school. Science is tested only in fourth grade, where just over half of students reached proficiency. Older social studies data, from before the pandemic, is present but not directly comparable because the assessment and cut scores have changed. A parent looking at this school’s test performance will see a school where a solid majority of children are meeting grade-level expectations in reading by the time they leave elementary school, while math achievement is more moderate.

The school belongs to the Greenville 01 school district, one of the largest and best-resourced districts in South Carolina. The district brief turned up no recent major changes or initiatives to report, so the school operates under the district’s existing framework without any unusual district-level churn. No information was available on special education or English learner populations, course access, or staffing ratios, so those aspects remain a gap a prospective parent would want to learn about directly from the school.

The community context shapes the experience of this school. Slater-Marietta is a rural exurban area, formerly a textile mill village, that has seen population decline over the decades. The dominant employer has long been the mill site, which now produces fiberglass composites. There is no traditional downtown or walkable commercial center; most errands require a car. Housing values in the area are well below the national and state medians, making this one of the more affordable parts of Greenville County. The area is not growing — it is slowly contracting — and incomes tend to be lower than county averages. A family moving here for the school would be choosing a quiet, unincorporated setting with a strong historical identity but limited local amenities, relying on the nearby city of Greenville for jobs and services.

For a parent, Slater Marietta Elementary looks like a small, high-poverty rural school within a capable district where reading proficiency improves markedly by the upper grades. The math results give a softer signal, and a parent may want to ask the school about how it supports students in that subject. The peer environment is homogenous in economic terms and predominantly white. The housing market is affordable. This is not a growing suburb with new development and a bustling school scene; it is a stable, modest place where the school sits at the center of a close-knit, formerly industrial community.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 354%

School 54% · District 66% · ▼ 12 pts below district

▲ 2 pts above state median · ▼ 11 pts below county median

Grade 460%

School 60% · District 65% · ▼ 5 pts below district

▲ 9 pts above state median · ▼ 4 pts below county median

Grade 553%

School 53% · District 60% · ▼ 7 pts below district

▲ 8 pts above state median · ▼ 4 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 354%

School 54% · District 71% · ▼ 16 pts below district

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

Grade 460%

School 60% · District 71% · ▼ 11 pts below district

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

Grade 567%

School 67% · District 70% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▲ 7 pts above state median · ▼ 1 pts below county median

Science

Grade 452%

School 52% · District 63% · ▼ 11 pts below district

▲ 7 pts above state median · ▼ 10 pts below county median

Social studies

Grade 567%

School 67% · District 80% · ▼ 13 pts below district

▼ 4 pts below state median · ▼ 14 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.