Here's The Best School District In Virginia: Report

FALLS CHURCH, VA — A new report has ranked the best school district in Virginia, and the answer may not not come as a surprise. The website 24/7 Wall St., a Delaware corporation that publishes financial news and commentary, sifted through various school data to determine the best school district in every state.

In Virginia, the Falls Church City Public Schools topped the list. The district has 2,465 students and spends $17,902 per student, the analysis found. The high school graduation rate is 100 percent and 80.2 percent of adults have a bachelor's degree.

The company evaluated the districts by creating an index based on data in the following categories:

• Child poverty
• Spending per student
• Graduation rate
• Teachers per student
• Percentage of adults with a bachelor's degree
• Preschool enrollment
• Advanced Placement enrollment

Several school districts in the U.S. spend more than $50,000 per student on education each year, 24/7 Wall St. said, but others spend less than $2,000 per student.

"That difference in spending contributes to major disparities in student outcomes throughout the country," the authors wrote. "The majority of a school's budget is spent on staff and teacher salaries. A school that is able to attract the best teachers can give their students a major advantage."

Indeed, wealthier areas often reap those rewards. (For more news like this, find your local Patch here. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app; download the free Patch Android app here.)

Local sources, including property taxes, account for about 44 percent of all school funding in the U.S. This means most of the best school districts are located in affluent counties where the majority of households earn more than double that of a typical American household.

But in Falls Church, the median household income from 2012-2016 was $115,244, roughly double the national average of $55,322. Furthermore, the poverty rate in the city was 2.7 percent, much lower than the national average of 12.7 percent.

The nationwide rankings report published on Monday follows a January report from the same site that found Virginia overall ranked 14th in the country for best schools.

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Here's a breakdown of Virginia schools, according to 24/7 Wall St.:

• High school graduation rate: 86.7% (20th highest)
• Public school spending: $10,358 per pupil (15th lowest)
• 8th grade NAEP proficiency: 37.6% (math) 35.9% (reading)
• Adults with at least a bachelor’s degree: 38.1% (6th highest)
• Adults 25-64 with incomes at or above national median: 57.0% (9th highest)

After only Maryland, Virginia has the best school system in the South. Across several grade levels, students in Virginia outperform their counterparts in most other states by a number of measures. For example, among fourth graders in the state, 47.3% are proficient in math, and 42.9% are proficient in reading — well above the respective 39.4% and 34.8% shares nationwide. Additionally, there are more high scoring AP test results in the state — adjusted for the number of 11th and 12th graders — than in any other state except Maryland.

The success of students in Virginia is due in part to factors outside of the classroom. Students with college educated parents are more likely to succeed academically, and an estimated 59.0% of children in the state have at least one parent with a post-secondary education, the eighth largest share among states.

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