About this site
The ESTF Provider Finder makes South Carolina’s approved ESTF provider list searchable. That list is public, but it is published as a spreadsheet, and a spreadsheet cannot answer the two questions that matter most to a family: what is near me, and what do they offer.
Palmetto NavigatEd is not affiliated with, operated by, or endorsed by the South Carolina Department of Education, ClassWallet or FACTS. Approved providers here come from the Department’s published list, which is always the authority on who is approved; public charter schools come from our own list and are marked as such.
What this site does
It takes the Department of Education’s published file, cleans it up, works out what each provider actually offers, and puts them on a map. All 1,093 listings are here — every provider on the Department’s approved list, plus South Carolina’s public charter schools.
What this site deliberately does not do
- It does not rank or recommend. There is no paid placement, no sponsored listing, and no commercial relationship with any provider. Results are ordered by how well they match what you searched for, then alphabetically. That is the whole ranking.
- It does not host reviews. A small directory with a handful of ratings is worse than none: it looks authoritative while being statistically meaningless, and it creates a moderation obligation nobody here can meet. Search for a provider’s name to find reviews elsewhere.
- It does not decide eligibility or interpret programme rules. Those are determinations for the Department of Education, and getting them wrong here would be worse than not addressing them. Where rules matter, we link to the official FAQ.
- It does not handle money or enrolment. Payments go through ClassWallet; enrolment is between you and the provider.
- It does not track you. No accounts, no cookies, no advertising networks.
Privacy
Yours
There are no accounts, no cookies, and no analytics or tracking scripts. If you use the “near me” feature, your location is used in your browser to sort results and is never sent anywhere. The details are on the privacy page.
Providers’
The state’s file contains contact details for every provider, including many who are individual tutors working from home. Publishing that at full fidelity is legal — it is already public — but a spreadsheet you have to open is not the same artefact as an indexed website that never forgets. So:
- We do not publish email addresses — not even ones providers typed into their own descriptions. Published addresses draw phishing.
- We do not put a precise pin on a private home. Where a provider is registered at what looks like a residence, we show the town and a general area instead of a street address, and the map position is deliberately imprecise.
- We say when an address is a shared office rather than a place to visit, so nobody drives to the wrong end of the state.
If you are a provider and something here is wrong, or you would rather not be listed, contact Palmetto NavigatEd and we will correct or remove it. The state’s own list is separate and only they can change that.
Accessibility
This site targets WCAG 2.2 AA. Every part of it works with a keyboard, the map has a complete list equivalent, and nothing relies on colour alone to convey meaning. If something does not work for you, that is a bug worth reporting.
Cost and independence
The site is plain static files, with no database and no advertising. It costs almost nothing to run, which is deliberate: a public-information resource that depends on revenue eventually starts serving the revenue.
More on the data itself: how we process the provider list.