New Jersey Is 2nd Best In Nation For Schools In 2019: Here's Why

Students are back at school, but where they live often determines the quality of their education, according to new studies that ranked the states with the best and worst school systems for 2019.

Start patting yourself in the back, New Jerseyans. The Garden State ranked second. New Jersey also has the second best teachers in the nation, according to another school-education study. The two surveys were conducted by the personal finance website WalletHub.

In the best schools report, WalletHub compared public school systems in 50 states and the District of Columbia across 25 measures of quality and safety, ranging from the pupil-to-teacher ratio to the dropout rate to median standardized-test scores.

Here is how New Jersey fared in different categories (which will explain why it did so well nationally):

• Quality: 1st
• Safety: 11th
• Lowest dropout rate: 2nd
• Highest math test scores: 3rd
• Highest reading scores: 2nd
• Lowest pupil-teacher ratio: 3rd

The ranking shouldn't come as a complete surprise. Every year, New Jersey schools and school districts are ranked among the best in America on virtually every list:

• US News Best High Schools 2019: Here's How 350 NJ Schools Ranked
  
• New Jersey's Best School Districts 2020: New Rankings Released
• Every NJ School Graded In Newly Released State Report: Your Rank?

The best schools are concentrated in the Northeast, where four of the top five states — Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, Virginia and Vermont, respectively — are all located. The bottom rankings were in West Virginia, Mississippi, Arizona, Louisiana and New Mexico.

WalletHub determined the best and worst states for public-school education by primarily looking at two key dimensions, including “quality” and “safety.”

WalletHub evaluated those dimensions using 29 metrics. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the highest quality of public K–12 education.

Finally, WalletHub determined each state-weighted average across several metrics to calculate its overall score, and used the resulting scores to rank-order the sample.

Those metrics included:

• Presence of public schools in the “Top 700 Best U.S. Schools” list published by U.S. News & World Report
• The National Blue Ribbon Schools Program's recognition of public and private elementary, middle and high schools based on their overall academic excellence, or their progress in closing achievement gaps among student subgroups.
• High school graduation rates among low-income students
• Projected high school graduation rate increases between 2018-2019 and 2031-2032

In another WalletHub survey, North Dakota took home the award for best state for teachers in the nation, with Arizona coming in dead last in the rankings.

That report from WalletHub ranked all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on 23 key indicators of “teacher-friendliness,” which included such things as the income growth potential for the profession, pupil-teacher ratio and teacher safety.

Each of these 23 key indicators were then listed with its corresponding weight, and graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the maximum teacher experience. The weighted scores were subsequently combined to give each state an individual score.

Here are the top 10 overall states for teachers:

1. North Dakota: 61.69
2. New Jersey: 60.15
3. Pennsylvania: 59.67
4. Wyoming: 56.98
5. Connecticut: 56.53
6. Illinois: 55.93
7. Minnesota: 55.61
8. Massachusetts: 55.41
9. Utah: 54.50
10. New York: 54.03

You can read the full best-schools report here and you can read the full best-teachers report here.