With the Every Student Succeeds Act shaping state curriculums and students getting closer to the end of their summer breaks, the personal-finance website WalletHub recently released its report on 2018’s States with the Best & Worst School Systems.
In order to determine the best school systems in America, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 25 key measures of quality and safety. The data set ranges from pupil-teacher ratio to dropout rate to median standardized-test scores.
Tennessee was ranked number 35.
States with the Best School Systems
1 Massachusetts
2 New Jersey
3 Connecticut
4 New Hampshire
5 Vermont
6 Virginia
7 Minnesota
8 Maryland
9 Wisconsin
10 Colorado
States with the Worst School Systems
42 West Virginia
43 Oregon
44 Alabama
45 Mississippi
46 Nevada
47 Arizona
48 Alaska
49 District of Columbia
50 Louisiana
51 New Mexico
Best vs. Worst
• Iowa has the lowest dropout rate, 8.7 percent, which is 3.5 times lower than in the District of Columbia, the highest at 30.8 percent.
• Vermont has the lowest pupil-teacher ratio, 10.54, which is 2.2 times lower than in California, the highest at 23.63.
• Illinois, Missouri and Wisconsin share the highest median SAT score, 613.33, which is 1.5 times higher than in the District of Columbia, the lowest at 396.67.
• The District of Columbia has the lowest share of high school students who were bullied online, 8.90 percent, which is 2.4 times lower than in Louisiana, the highest at 21.20 percent.
View the full report here.