By admin 
The Columbia area boasts two of the highest achieving school districts in South Carolina, as measured by student assessment data.
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Both Lexington School District 1 and Lexington-Richland School District 5 slotted in among the top 10 districts in the state on the 2025-26 SC READY exam, according to data released Monday by the South Carolina Department of Education.
Lexington 1 students ranked eighth in the state on the standardized assessment, which measures proficiency in English language arts and mathematics for students in grades 3 through 8, while Lexington-Richland 5 students finished 10th.
Roughly two-thirds of the students tested in each district met or exceeded expectations in English language arts and more than half were proficient in math, according to SC READY data.
Both figures compare favorably to state averages, which were at their highest recorded level during the 2025-26 school year.
On a whole, more than 61% of South Carolina elementary and middle school students met or exceeded expectations in English language arts and nearly 48% met or exceeded expectations in mathematics.
In many, but not all cases, district performance on the SC READY assessment is closely related to students’ socioeconomic status.
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Districts with fewer pupils in poverty tend to register higher scores than districts with higher rates of poverty, data shows.
While no other district in Richland or Lexington County topped the state average in either subject area, virtually every district in both counties showed a year-over-year improvement in SC READY scores.
In most cases, local gains in English language arts and math proficiency exceeded average state gains in both areas.
Lexington 2 saw a 21% jump in students who met or exceeded expectations in mathematics, while Richland 1, Lexington 3 and Lexington-Richland 5 all increased their math proficiency scores by more than 10%, data shows.
English language arts scores didn’t increase as dramatically as math scores, but still showed improvement in all Richland and Lexington County districts.
The only local district where SC READY scores did not uniformly increase was Lexington 4, where math scores dropped by 1.7 percentage points.
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