Original Research by School Decision on Academy of Hope Charter
Academy of Hope Charter is a small public charter school in Conway, South Carolina, serving pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. It is part of the Horry 01 district, which is the sole public school system covering Horry County. The school’s enrollment is modest for a PK-8 building, and every student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is predominantly Black, with a White minority and small shares of Hispanic and multiracial students. Because the school does not serve high school grades, there is no graduation rate to report.
State assessment results for the most recent testing year are suppressed across all subjects and grade levels. This is a common practice when the number of tested students in a grade is very small, and the tested counts reported here fall well below typical thresholds for public reporting. The suppression means no proficiency rate, average scale score, or participation rate can be shared publicly. A multi-year trend summary does show two years of data for ELA and math, but the change between them is marked as not computable, and the numbers themselves are suppressed in the detailed records. A parent considering this school should understand that the school’s small size prevents the state from releasing most academic performance figures. Without those figures, it is not possible to characterize how student achievement compares to other schools or to state averages. Parents may want to ask the school directly for internal assessment information or other evidence of student progress.
Horry County, anchored by Conway, is a growing area that serves as the county seat and is part of the Myrtle Beach metropolitan region. Conway itself has a historic downtown along the Waccamaw River, with a Riverwalk, restaurants, and several buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. The presence of Coastal Carolina University and Horry-Georgetown Technical College gives the town a college-town dimension, and the broader county continues to see population growth driven by the expanding coastal economy. Housing values in the area are near the state average, and the local unemployment rate has been stable near the national figure.
As a charter school, Academy of Hope operates with some independence from the district’s traditional school structure, though it remains a regular public school overseen by Horry 01. The school offers a single building for students from pre-K through middle school, which may appeal to families seeking a smaller, more contained environment for their children through eighth grade. Because the school serves elementary and middle grades only, students must transition to a different high school setting afterward.
The school’s academic context is essentially opaque from the public data. The small tested populations, combined with suppression rules, mean that no proficiency information is available – an honest gap that families will need to investigate on their own. The school’s poverty level is universal, which may indicate a high concentration of students eligible for federal meal programs, and the racial demographics reflect a majority Black enrollment. The school’s peer environment is intimate by size, and the neighborhood setting in Conway offers a mix of historic downtown, university influence, and suburban development common to a county seat experiencing steady growth.
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