Wallet Hub has published this year’s rankings of “states with the best & worst school systems”…
What are your thoughts? Do you agree with where your home state ranks on this list? What is helping/hurting your state’s school system?
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We’re no. 1. But that doesn’t mean that more than half the kids in the state aren’t in school systems that don’t work and prepare kids for either college or a trade. Many schools are dangerous, underfunded or have local issues. It’s sad really. If you don’t have parents who move to a good school district, you are at a disadvantage from K-on.
What is helping or hurting? If I commented it would mostly be against the TOS. What I can say. Mainly, people who don’t serve educational needs as the main priority. Huge spending on fancy buildings v. staff is also growing.
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The use of SAT and ACT scores separately gives skewed results based on the different populations of students who take those tests (e.g. states where every student takes the ACT tend to have lower ACT scores than states where only a few college bound students take the ACT).
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State level is meaningless. The variance within a state is likely larger than between states.
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True, but that lower median is partially offset by the “double weight” awarded to districts based on % of high schoolers that take a standardized test, which would be high 90’s for districts that require ACT for graduation.
What’s missing to me, is the data years utilized. Pre-covid numbers?
Yes, we’re in NC where it is mandated that every 11th grader take the ACT whether they are college-bound or not. We’re ranked 29. I think the NC schools are pretty good really, but it does vary from district to district. What I don’t understand about the ranking is how we’re also 30th in quality and 32nd in safety. How does that average out to 29?
It’s a weighted average. 80% for quality and 20% for safety. But yes, not sure how that ends up above the two individual rankings.
It is possible that something like this occurs:
| Name | X | X rank | Y | Y rank | Total | Total rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 10 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 15 | 1 |
| B | 9 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 11 | 3 |
| C | 8 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 12 | 2 |
| D | 4 | 4 | 6 | 1 | 10 | 4 |
In the above example, C is third ranked in each of X and Y, but second ranked overall based on the sum of X and Y.
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Arizona has ranked 48th for per capita spending per student and poor to mediocre schools since we moved there in '99. We raised our son in the “best” school district in the state, and it was still underwhelming. We ended up looking elseswhere for high school. So, I’m not suprised by this list.
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No big surprises and some of the wealthiest states per capita are at the top of the list.
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I noticed that many of these states also have high property taxes, at least MA and CT do. Don’t know about all the others.
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Yes there appears to be a correlation
New Jersey has the highest property taxes in the nation 
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We race to the bottom, just a bit above Hawaii, which doesn’t mean much.
Our state is pretty low and it’s been that way for decades. There were 3 states that always used to battle for which would be 48, 49, and 50th and our state is still down there, but the other two have risen up in this ranking. One of the states that was always in a race for the bottom has moved up about 7 spots. A few years ago it added a requirement that students needed to be at grade level in order to be promoted to the next grade (either that or they had to be considered proficient in reading at the end of 3rd grade, I can’t recall). I strongly suspect that has helped to improve the state’s academic performance, as it’s far easier to teach a more limited number of skills than to teach a wide array of levels in the same class (i.e. nonreaders to those with 10th grade reading levels and everywhere in between).
That being said, however, it is very much school-dependent. In our state near the bottom of the list there are public schools that are rated among the best in the country. One of the reasons is because of magnet schools that concentrate “the best and the brightest” into a few places and then leave the rest trailing behind.
Decades ago (i.e. when I was growing up), there used to be a very stratified educational system even within a school. I recall attending a magnet school that had regular, enriched, honors, and gifted coursework in the academic subjects. I recall a high school where there was special ed, regular, honors, AP, and gifted AP. Depending on which track one was on, the quality of education received was very different. My family moved around a lot when I was growing up, including to different states that were higher-ranked for their educational systems. The education I received in the gifted track in this poor-ranking state was far superior than that I received in higher-ranking states, including in a top district of a Top 5 state in this ranking.
Now the model in this state (and most of the country) is for inclusion, so stopping all the stratification that was taking place. The state’s ranking in education hasn’t really changed. So all this to say that looking at public schools on a macro-level (state) isn’t nearly as helpful as looking at it on a micro-level (school…or subgroups in a school).
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We are so lucky to be #1!
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There have been people on these forums who have promoted the idea that “Asian culture” = “high educational achievement”. What is their explanation for Hawaii school rankings?
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Hawaii = Pacific Islander, not the stereotypical “Asian” referred to by those people.
A better example for your statement would be WA or CA (nowhere near the top) where up to 1/3 of kids in certain schools are Asian.
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https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/HI says that Hawaii’s population is:
- 36.8% Asian alone
- 10.5% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander alone
- 25.0% Two or More Races (probably most include Asian)
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/WA,CA,HI/PST045221 shows Washington and California demographics for comparison.
I never like rankings, but tiering does often makes sense. MA understandably is always in a league by itself, followed in the second tier by states like NJ, CT, NH, MD, VA, etc. One surprise on this list, at least for me, is MN. I think it should belong to a higher tier.
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