Pickens County School District announced it earned a six-year accreditation from Cognia and reported notable recent gains in student assessments and graduation outcomes, district officials said at the June board meeting.

District Executive Director of Teaching and Learning Dr. Abby May told the board that the district’s engagement review in May resulted in accreditation valid for six years with a two-year check-in. “We are fully accredited,” Dr. May said, and the district’s overall score rose 11 points from 2019, she added.

Dr. May highlighted areas the review praised: student services and counseling, teacher and administrator perceptions of school safety, the district’s instructional framework, and partnerships with community stakeholders. She also flagged areas for improvement that Cognia recommended, including professional learning tied to instructional practices, a more focused districtwide professional-learning plan, stronger professional learning communities (PLCs) and instructional technology use as a teaching partner rather than the primary instructional tool.

On testing, Dr. May provided several cohort gains the district recorded this year: an 11 percentage-point increase in eighth-grade math from one year to the next; Tate Elementary’s jump of 21 points in the share of students scoring at levels three and four in math and ELA from third to fourth grade; Harmony’s 12-point increase in those categories for math from third to fourth grade; Hill City’s 10-point gain in ELA from third to fourth; a 2-point increase at Jackson Middle in the share of students scoring three and four in math from fifth to sixth grade; Pickens Junior’s 11-point increase in seventh-to-eighth-grade math; and Pickens High’s 12-point increase in biology three/four scores. Dr. May cautioned that testing updates are not “official” until July but said she wanted to share the district’s celebrations with the board.

Superintendent Dr. Thomas reported on graduation and post‑graduation outcomes for the class of 2025. The district had 302 graduates. Of those, 145 were reported enrolled in further education, 103 employed, and four enlisted in the military; 46 graduates were both enrolled and employed, and four were both enrolled and enlisted. Those counts sum to the full class, which Dr. Thomas reported as 100% of the class of 2025 being enrolled, enlisted or employed based on information available at the time of the meeting. The district anticipates a four‑year graduation rate of 95.4% (to be finalized in the fall), up about four percentage points from the prior year, and said the class earned just under $800,000 in scholarship offers.

Board members and district leaders framed the accreditation and student outcomes as validation of ongoing strategic work but also emphasized continuing investments in professional learning and instructional technology to address the areas Cognia noted for improvement.

Ending: The district will report official state test results and the finalized graduation-rate release later in the summer and fall; the Cognia accreditation requires a two‑year check‑in to document progress on the review’s recommendations.