2016’s States with the Best & Worst School Systems

Hoboken, NJ Summer 2016

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

That isn’t to say that money doesn’t help. According to an Economic Policy Institute report, income is higher in states where the workforce is well educated and thus more productive. In turn, workers with better earnings contribute greater taxes to beef up state budgets over the long run.

In light of back-to-school season, WalletHub’s analysts compared the quality of education in the 50 states and the District of Columbia to shine the spotlight on top-performing school systems. In making such a comparison, we examined each state and the District across 17 key metrics, ranging from “student-teacher ratio” to “average SAT and ACT scores” to “dropout rate.” Continue reading below for our findings, additional expert commentary and the full description of our methodology.

Source: WalletHub

Source: WalletHub

Overall Rank State Total Score‘School-System Quality’ Rank ‘School-System Safety’ Rank
1 Massachusetts 73.65 1 1
2 New Jersey 69.13 3 3
3 Connecticut 65.47 2 20
4 Vermont 64.75 5 9
5 Wisconsin 64.24 7 2
6 New Hampshire 63.12 4 25
7 Virginia 62.95 6 13
8 Maine 60.45 8 16
9 Delaware 59.76 16 5
10 Minnesota 59.60 10 19
11 Iowa 57.50 12 38
12 Indiana 57.38 9 41
13 Illinois 57.31 14 22
14 Florida 56.00 21 8
15 Nebraska 55.88 11 40
16 Maryland 55.68 13 36
17 Kentucky 55.50 15 30
18 Utah 55.01 27 4
19 North Carolina 54.57 24 11
20 Kansas 54.13 20 14
21 Texas 53.83 26 10
22 North Dakota 53.34 17 42
23 Colorado 53.06 18 49
24 Montana 52.99 19 32
25 New York 51.61 32 15
26 Washington 51.11 30 12
27 Oklahoma 51.09 36 7
28 Rhode Island 51.08 31 21
29 Wyoming 51.00 22 34
30 Pennsylvania 50.74 28 28
31 Ohio 50.65 25 44
32 Missouri 49.38 29 39
33 Idaho 47.16 34 31
34 Michigan 46.67 35 29
35 Georgia 46.17 39 23
36 Tennessee 45.84 33 43
37 South Carolina 45.72 40 18
38 Arkansas 45.65 23 50
39 Hawaii 45.44 42 6
40 California 45.34 38 35
41 South Dakota 43.55 37 48
42 Alabama 39.85 41 47
43 Oregon 39.65 43 46
44 Nevada 38.02 48 17
45 West Virginia 37.73 44 37
46 Mississippi 36.63 46 26
47 District of Columbia 35.10 50 24
48 Arizona 35.03 47 33
49 Alaska 34.36 45 45
50 New Mexico 33.30 51 27
51 Louisiana 30.33 49 51