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A map shows the states with the best and worst public schools, based on a new report that analyzed multiple aspects of state education systems. However, several education experts have cautioned against placing too much stock in such rankings.
In its 2026 ranking, World Population Review listed New York as the state with the best public schools in the nation. Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Illinois rounded out the top five. On the other end of the spectrum, Arizona ranked at last. Alaska, Nevada, Oklahoma and New Mexico also ranked among the states with the worst public schools.
The report’s ranking was based on four categories: K-12 performance, such as graduation rates and test scores; school funding and resources; higher education quality; and school safety.
Education experts told Newsweek that the metrics used did not tell the whole story, including the impact that demographic factors such as income and parental education levels have on student outcomes.
Another Ranking of the US’s School Systems
A separate analysis by WalletHub published on Monday ranked Massachusetts as the state with the best school system, followed by Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Wisconsin.
New Mexico was deemed the state with the worst school system, according to that ranking. Alaska, Oklahoma, Oregon and West Virginia were also in the bottom five.
That ranking set out to determine the top-performing school system in the country by scoring the 50 states and the District of Columbia on 32 metrics about school quality and safety. These metrics included test scores, pupil-teacher ratios, dropout rates and the number of school shootings.
According to the analysis, Massachusetts ranked first in the nation because it boasts some of the best test scores in the country and had the fifth lowest share of students who reported being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property.
Education Experts Urge Caution
Education researchers told Newsweek that too much stock should not be placed on broad state-by-state rankings.
Sean Reardon, a professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford University, said the ranking systems used “are relatively arbitrary and reflect the influence of many factors outside of schools’ control.”
He argued that such rankings often reward affluent states such as Massachusetts and Connecticut while penalizing lower-income states such as New Mexico and West Virginia since wealthier parents can provide more educational opportunities for their children outside of school.
“A better ranking would measure how much students learn as a result of their experiences in public schools, rather than conflating school quality with out-of-school opportunities,” he said.
Reardon also warned that such rankings could lead policymakers to emulate educational practices in states that are ranked highly but may not actually have the best school systems.
Marguerite Roza, a research professor and the director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, also noted that demographic factors influence student outcomes and should be accounted for when comparing school systems.
“We know that student demographics (like poverty and race) affect outcomes, so I’d prefer a metric that adjusts for those student characteristics,” Roza told Newsweek.
“Delivering high outcomes in a state that has a lot of wealthy children whose parents have graduate degrees isn’t necessarily indicative of strong schooling. High outcomes even after adjusting for student characteristics is more impressive,” she continued.
Roza argued that rankings should focus less on educational inputs and more on outcomes. “Inputs (like funding or class sizes) only matter if those inputs deliver measurable value for students,” she said. “Having a small class size with a weaker teacher who isn’t effective at teaching reading isn’t desirable. I’d rather my kid be in a school with a stronger teacher even if that comes with larger classes.”
Paul Bruno, an assistant professor of education policy, organization and leadership at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, also said that rankings that rely on graduation rates and test scores often indicate more about students’ backgrounds than the impact schools have on learning. He pointed to research that found that measures such as student-teacher ratios and teacher qualifications were not reliable indicators of school effectiveness.
“‘School quality’ means different things to different people, and many of the most important measures of school quality, like student growth measures, are hard to get data on,” Bruno told Newsweek.
“For most purposes, the highest quality school is the one that does the most to help individual students grow and develop academically,” he said.
Bruno added: “I’d like to see state and federal policymakers place a stronger emphasis on making student growth and improvement measures publicly available and giving them the kind of attention we’ve historically given measures like student ‘proficiency’ or graduation rates. That would give schools and school districts more incentives to contribute to student growth.”
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Matthew Robinson and Shakeema Edwards.
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