Indian Land High School ranked 61st in South Carolina in the U.S. News and World Report Best High Schools rankings released Tuesday, the highest placement among Lancaster County School District high schools.
Andrew Jackson High School in Kershaw ranked 157th. Buford High School fell into the range U.S. News declines to rank precisely, somewhere between 172nd and 236th in the state, and U.S. News placed it third or fourth within the district, a tie band indicating another district school shares the same statewide range.
One measure drives almost all of it
The spread across the three schools comes down largely to a single number. U.S. News calculates a college readiness index from how many students take Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams and how many pass them, and it weights that measure more heavily than any other factor.
Indian Land scored 22.6. Andrew Jackson scored 3.0. Buford has no score at all, listed by U.S. News as not available, which happens when too few students sit for the exams to produce a figure.
Graduation rates tell a different story and do not follow the ranking order. Buford reported the district’s highest rate at 92 percent, ahead of Indian Land at 90 percent and Andrew Jackson at 85 percent. A school can graduate nearly all of its students and still land in the bottom band of these rankings if few of those students take a college level exam.
How the rankings were built
U.S. News evaluated around 27,000 public high schools this year and ranked nearly 18,000. Schools were scored on six indicators, including performance on state required assessments, graduation rates, results among underserved students, the breadth of college level coursework offered and outcomes on AP and IB exams.
The company worked with the research firm RTI International on the methodology and used data from the 2023 and 2024 academic year, meaning the classes measured have already graduated. The underlying figures came from the College Board, the International Baccalaureate organization and state education agencies. No parent surveys or reputation scores were part of the formula.
The full South Carolina list and the individual school profiles are posted at usnews.com.
Source line: Reporting based on the U.S. News and World Report Best High Schools rankings released Aug. 18, 2026, the profile pages for Indian Land, Andrew Jackson and Buford high schools, and the U.S. News announcement distributed the same day.
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Thomas Hyslip lives in Tega Cay with his wife and daughter. After 27 years in the U.S. Army and Federal Law Enforcement, he retired to pursue his passion for teaching. Tom is now an Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of South Florida. In 2 short years he has won 10 awards from the South Carolina Press Association, including first place in column writing, education beat reporting and best podcast.
