Ranking the Best & Worst School Systems in the U.S.

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Earlier in August, the financial analyzing website Wallethub released a ranking of the states with the best and worst public school systems. Analysts gathered data from several organizations, including the U.S. Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in order to grade school systems on their quality and safety.

With school resuming session, many parents or guardians might be wondering whether they’ve selected the best school districts to secure their children’s academic success and future successes in life. For many parents and guardians, “quality” is a question of public funding that is available. While that may be true in many cases, more resources do not always correlate with better academic performance, as our findings demonstrate.

So what did the report determine? For parents and children in the Northeast part of the country, the news is decidedly good. For those who live in the South, the news is decidedly less optimistic. States were graded on a wide range of metrics, including math and reading test scores, high school graduation and dropout rates, pupil-to-teacher ratio, and average SAT scores.

“I’ve found that ‘school quality’ indicators are proxies for what proportion of a school’s/district’s/state’s students are white, non-poor, and/or come from English-speaking households,” said David J. Menefee-Libey, a professor of politics at Pomona College. “The solution is not to be found in helping home-buying parents buy houses close to ‘good’ schools. The solution is to make poor children less poor.”

In order to reduce health disparities, it is critical to address inequities in programs, practices, and policies.

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According to Wallethub’s findings, the states that had the best school systems were: 5) Wisconsin (6% Latino population); 4) Vermont (1.6% Latino population); 3) Connecticut (14% Latino population); 2) New Jersey (19% Latino population); and 1) Massachusetts (10% Latino population).

Conversely, the states that Wallethub found to have the worst school systems were: 47) Washington, D.C. (10% Latino population); 48) Arizona (30% Latino population); 49) Alaska (6% Latino population); 50) New Mexico (47% Latino population); and 51) Louisiana (5% Latino population)

Iowa was found to have the lowest high school dropout rate while Washington, D.C. had the highest. Massachusetts had the highest math and reading test scores averages with Washington, D.C. again coming in last in both. Vermont had the lowest student-to-teacher ratio; California had the highest.