5 US States With Best, Worst School Systems

If you know your children will be in public schools for their entire K-12 career, it might pay to check out which states have the highest-quality educational offerings. WalletHub looked at how all 50, plus the District of Columbia, ranked across more than two dozen metrics in the "Quality" and "Safety" categories, including graduation and dropout rates, median SAT and ACT scores, bullying incidence, and the share of high school students who reported carrying a firearm onto campus. Here, the top five states that can brag about their educational systems, along with their total score out of 100:

1. Massachusetts; 74.2 (No. 1 in both "Quality" and "Safety" categories)
2. New Jersey; 67.1
3. Connecticut; 66.9
4. New Hampshire; 65.1
5. Vermont; 63.2

Read on for the five states with the worst school systems by this metric.

47. Arizona; 37.5
48. Alaska; 35.9
49. District of Columbia; 33.6
50. Louisiana; 32.5 (last in "Safety" category)
51. New Mexico; 31.5 (last in "Quality" category)

Check out how other states fared here. (The five most and least educated states.)