States with Best & Worst School Systems

With in-person learning this fall hinging on how well states handle the COVID-19 pandemic, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on 2020’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 33 key measures of quality and safety. The data set ranges from pupil-teacher ratio and dropout rate to median standardized-test scores and school closures due to COVID-19.

Quality & Safety of Schools in California (1=Best; 25=Avg.):

43rd – Math Test Scores
39th – Reading Test Scores
50th – Pupil-Teacher Ratio
34th – Median SAT Score
16th – Median ACT Score
29th – % of Licensed/Certified Public K–12 Teachers
36th – Dropout Rate
7th – Bullying Incidence Rate
4th – % of Threatened/Injured High School Students
1st – Statewide School Closure due to COVID-19

Adam McCann, financial writer for WalletHub, says, “Securing a child’s academic success begins with choosing the right schools. But how can parents decide where to enroll their kids? Because children develop and learn at different rates, the ideal answer to that question varies based on each student’s needs. Those needs have become even more specialized this year as families grapple with the impact of the COVID-19 crisis and school administrators wait to see whether they will be able to hold in-person learning.”

Desert Sands Unified School District decided earlier this month that it will reopen with full distance learning in August, before potentially transitioning to a “hybrid” learning model later in the school year.

The Coachella Valley Unified School District earlier this month also decided to start the 2020-21 academic year with distance learning.

The Palm Springs Unified School District this month voted unanimously to begin the school year on Aug. 5 with online instruction and later in the school year move to a hybrid model, where students divide their time between in-person learning and online instruction.

For a complete list of 2020’s States with the Best & Worst School Systems,