Research has documented a crisis in South Carolina's high school graduation rate. While state officials report a graduation rate above 70 percent, researchers from South Carolina and elsewhere place the rate just above 50 percent, with rates among minority students lower than 50 percent. South Carolina's graduation rate is the worst of all 50 states. This study documents the public costs of high school dropouts in South Carolina, and examines how school choice could provide large public benefits by increasing public school graduation rates. It calculates the annual cost of South Carolina dropouts caused by reduced tax revenue, increased Medicaid costs and increased incarceration costs, and documents the employment impacts that dropouts have on the South Carolina economy. It then examines how competition from private schools already raises public school graduation rates, and calculates the public benefits that would follow from increasing South Carolina's public school graduation rates by enacting a modest school choice program. (Contains 10 figures, 7 tables and 28 endnotes.) [This study was released jointly by the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation and the South Carolina Policy Council.]