All three Fort Mill School District high schools placed among the top 20 in South Carolina in the U.S. News and World Report Best High Schools rankings released Tuesday, with Fort Mill High School rising to No. 8 statewide.
Nation Ford High School ranked No. 12 in South Carolina and Catawba Ridge High School ranked No. 18. Nationally, Fort Mill High placed 1,006th, Nation Ford 1,368th and Catawba Ridge 1,768th out of nearly 18,000 ranked public high schools, putting all three inside roughly the top 10 percent in the country.
The rankings carry weight in a town where school quality drives home sales and where the district has spent a decade absorbing some of the fastest enrollment growth in South Carolina. All three campuses sit within a few miles of one another in the same district, listed by U.S. News under its state designation, York 04.
How the three schools compared
Fort Mill High reported the strongest numbers of the three. Its graduation rate was 98 percent and its college readiness index score was 50.2, the highest in the district. Enrollment in grades 9 through 12 was 2,115…