With public education spending in the U.S. reaching over $16,000 per pupil each year, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on the States with the Best & Worst School Systems in 2024, as well as expert commentary, to help parents find the most worthwhile places to enroll their children.
WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 32 key measures of quality and safety. The data set ranges from the pupil-teacher ratio and dropout rate to median standardized-test scores.
Quality & Safety of Schools in New York (1=Best; 25=Avg.):
- Overall Rank: 8th
- 22nd – Reading Test Scores
- 6th – Pupil-Teacher Ratio
- 5th – Median ACT Score
- 27th – % of Licensed/Certified Public K–12 Teachers
- 24th – Dropout Rate
- 20th – Bullying Incidence Rate
- 1st – Existence of Digital Learning Plan
Expert Commentary
Does variation in per-pupil spending explain most of the variation in school quality?
“Money matters. Anyone who tells you otherwise is being dishonest or coy. Even when we acknowledge per-pupil spending matters to school quality the rationale for doing so is often incomplete. How? By focusing attention on one side of the financial ledger at the expense of the other. With this said, variations in per-pupil spending tell us a few things. This includes the local tax base, property values, costs for school personnel and facilities, and a state’s funding formula for schools across zip codes. These variables alone, or in combination, do not explain school quality. Naturally, state and city leaders’ decisions about tax policy influence school quality. Nevertheless, the leadership of a principal and the tenaciousness of teachers and paraprofessionals shape school quality every day. At times in a manner per-pupil spending evaluations alone cannot explain very well. This is why an assessment of variations in school quality must consider decisions made outside and inside a school building to ascertain how, where, and why per-pupil spending matters, and what variations mean to student success.”
Gerard Robinson – Professor, University of Virginia
“Depends on what you mean by ‘school quality.’ If you are considering only academic outcomes like test scores and graduation rates, per-pupil spending is certainly a substantive part of the equation. But it is easily outweighed by outside-of-school factors. A more sophisticated approach would be to consider how much ‘value’ a given school adds to a particular child's learning, which means accounting for those other influences in isolating the impacts of school alone. In that kind of approach, school resources make up a much bigger piece of the pie.”
Christopher Lubienski – Professor; Director, Center for Evaluation and Education Policy (CEEP), Indiana University Bloomington
What can state and local policymakers do to improve their school systems without raising taxes?
“Invest in teacher learning around a small number of initiatives that are sustained over time. Getting more focused would not cost districts anything and may even cut costs. In terms of what to focus on I would suggest implementing a balanced assessment system of and for learning. Assessment of learning is important for policymakers and administrators to make decisions about allocating resources and providing help where it is needed most. Assessment for learning (sometimes called classroom assessment) is far more important, as it involves the formative assessment process of setting clear learning targets, engaging students in meaningful learning activities, eliciting evidence of student understanding, providing feedback from multiple sources (teacher, self, peers), and making teaching and learning decisions. Overwhelming evidence states that the teacher is still the greatest influence on student performance and putting more authority over learning back into the classroom would be a step in the right direction.”
Bryan Beverly, Ph.D. – Director, Office of K-12 Outreach, Michigan State University
“Hire well-trained professionals. Limit spending on non-instructional expenses such as administration and marketing. Invest in comprehensive approaches to students, taking into account health, their welfare, etc. Avoid redundancies, including funding parallel systems in ‘choice’ schemes.”
Christopher Lubienski – Professor; Director, Center for Evaluation and Education Policy (CEEP), Indiana University Bloomington
In setting a child up for success, how important is the quality of the school relative to other factors (family, neighborhood, etc.)?
“I think that in most research estimates schools account for 18-20% of the variance in student achievement. The remaining 80-82% is determined by other, non-school factors. This finding stems all the way back to the Coleman Report in the 1960s and has been replicated many times since. Incidentally, one of the other main findings of the Coleman Report is that variance within schools was greater than variance among schools. This suggests that classroom variance (sometimes referred to as teacher quality) is greater than the variance from one school to another.”
Bryan Beverly, Ph.D. – Director, Office of K-12 Outreach, Michigan State University
“Despite what we might hope, school is only a relatively small part of the equation, and in-classroom factors even less. That said, school factors are a unique area where policy can have a more direct impact. That is, it is hard for policymakers to leverage change in family structure, parenting practices, family support for learning, etc. But they can bring in better teaching and curricula.”
Christopher Lubienski – Professor; Director, Center for Evaluation and Education Policy (CEEP), Indiana University Bloomington