Does Maryland have the best school system?

 Does Maryland have the best school system?

 

Well not quite the best but depending on whom you ask it might be the third best school system in the country.

WalletHub compared all 50 states and DC schools across 32 key metrics.  The analysis looked at funding, safety, class size and instructor credentials as key indices of greatness.

By this evaluation, Massachusetts has the best school system in the country.   That isn’t particularly new news as most state rating systems rank Massachusetts highly.  One of the differences in this evaluation is that the hard focus was not just on test scores but rather making sure students feel safe, comfortable and cared for.

In the ranking, Maryland came in at 3^rd, just after Massachusetts and Connecticut.    Louisiana was #47.   Guess those 10 Commandments that are supposed to be in every classroom are to help the kids pray for a better school system.  Dead last at 51 (remember 50 states plus DC) was New Mexico.  The lowest drop-out rate went to West Virginia; the highest was DC.

Maryland has the 3^rd best school system according to these rankings. It is one of only seven states with laws making digital content and instructional materials available outside of the classroom.  It has the 7^th highest share of students scoring at least 3 on AP exams.  It also has the 10^th-best share of public schools that rank in the top 700 nationwide, at about 6.2%.   Maryland was one of the top spending states.

Other variables usually not considered in these kinds of rankings include reports of being threatened or bullied while attending school, feeling unsafe at school or in transit to and from school. The availability of illegal drugs on school property was also a factor in measuring school safety as was the number of school shootings.  The rankings looked at aggregate data for each state.   So in Maryland the lower rankings on the Eastern Shore and Western Maryland would be offset by the higher rankings in the DC Maryland metro area and in the school systems surrounding Baltimore City.

This ranking is unique in the weight it gives to environmental safety factors in measuring the quality of a school system.   From the student’s perspective, those factors may well be the most important.