Illinois’ School System is Ranked #13 in the Country

Another day, another list of national rankings. This time, however, Illinois makes a decent showing in WalletHub's look at the best school districts in the nation.

Of all the things to complain about here in Illinois (and we have plenty of things), it would appear that the quality of your child's education is not one of them.

The numbers-crunchers over at WalletHub took a look at the school systems in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to determine which states are doing the best job at preparing our kids for college and/or beyond.

So, how do you go about figuring out who's doing it better? Here's what WalletHub was looking at:

In making such a comparison, we examined each state and the District across 17 key metrics, ranging from “student-teacher ratio” to “average SAT and ACT scores” to “dropout rate.”

Here's the top ten:

1. Massachusetts
2. New Jersey
3. Connecticut
4. Vermont
5. Wisconsin
6. New Hampshire
7. Virginia
8. Maine
9. Delaware
10. Minnesota

As for Illinois, we come in at #13 overall, with some of these numbers:

Quality of Schools in Illinois (1=Best; 25=Avg.):

• 19^th – Bullying-Incidents Rate
• 27^th – Reading Test Score
• 26^th – Pupil-Teacher Ratio
• 20^th – Dropout Rate
• 27^th – School Safety
• 1^st – Average SAT Score
• 24^th – Percentage of Licensed/Certified Public K–12 Teachers

For WalletHub's full report on our nation's school districts, click here.