RALEIGH North Carolina has broken into the top 20 of WalletHub’s annual ranking of the best and worst school systems in the United States.N.C.’s ranking comes in at 19th in the nation for 2016, based on WalletHub’s composite ranking of “school-system quality” rank and “school-system safety” rank. N.C. ranked 24 and 11, respectively, for each of those metrics, with an overall total score of 54.57. To put that score in perspective, Massachusetts ranked 1 in both school-system quality and school-system safety, with a total score of 73.65, while Louisiana ranked 51 overall with a total score of 30.33.WalletHub says each state, along with the District of Columbia, were examined across 17 key metrics, ranging from student-teacher ratio, average SAT and ACT scores to dropout rates. Gov. Pat McCrory sent out a release Monday evening addressing the ranking, celebrating the fact N.C. has jumped from a rank of 37 to 19 since 2014.”Improving education and teacher pay have been our top priorities since day one,” McCrory said. “Strategic investments in raising teacher pay, textbooks, digital learning resources and reading coaches have improved our state’s overall education ranking and helped contribute to our state’s best high school graduation rate in history.”Gauging the top and bottom five ranks for a few other metrics, N.C. tied for rank 49 in lowest average ACT scores but ranked third in the nation for lowest bullying incident rate. To check out the full rankings list, click here.
