The top reported proficiency rate is 34% in English language arts. The lowest is 19% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Mccormick Elementary
McCormick Elementary serves grades three through five in Mullins, a small city in South Carolina’s Pee Dee region that was once the nation’s largest tobacco market and now anchors itself around its historic downtown, the South Carolina Tobacco Museum, a public library, and recreational facilities like the Gapway complex. The city’s population has been declining, and the surrounding area is rural. McCormick Elementary is a regular public school, part of the Marion 10 school district. Its student body is majority Black, with a smaller share of white students, a modest number of Hispanic students, and a small number of students of two or more races.
Every student at McCormick Elementary qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, an indicator that the school serves a community of high economic need. The school is an elementary-only campus, so there is no graduation rate to report, and no data on chronic absenteeism, staffing, or discipline was available for this profile.
On the state’s SC Ready assessments, proficiency rates across math, English language arts, and science were low. In math, the share of students scoring at the proficient level or above was well under a quarter in each tested grade. In English language arts, the rate was higher, roughly a third of students in each grade, though still low compared to state averages. In fourth-grade science, about a quarter of students met the proficiency benchmark. The state changed cut scores for both English language arts and science testing in recent years, which affects comparability to prior results, so a single-year snapshot is the only evidence available. There is only one year of proficiency data for this school in the current assessment framework, making it impossible to identify a trend. A parent considering McCormick Elementary will want to discuss with the school how it supports foundational literacy and numeracy, given these numbers, and what specific interventions are in place.
Mullins has a compact downtown with a historic district listed on the National Register, but the school itself sits on Sandy Bluff Road, outside the most walkable core. Housing in the area is substantially more affordable than both the state and national medians, and home values have seen a modest year-over-year decline. The economic context shows a mortgage rate that has been fluctuating, and a national unemployment rate that has held steady.
The district, Marion 10, did not have any recent parent-relevant changes flagged in publicly available material. The comparison set for this school is not usable; the county has too few districts to generate a meaningful peer ranking on proficiency, so no comparison to other local schools is offered.
For a family weighing this school, the central takeaway is that McCormick Elementary is a high-poverty school in a shrinking rural community where academic outcomes on state tests are low. The school offers a traditional elementary experience for grades three through five and is part of a small district that did not report notable recent shifts. A parent should expect to engage closely with the school on academic support, ask about tutoring or intervention programs, and consider what supplemental resources outside the school day are available in Mullins.
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