Massachusetts scored highest on all four 2024 NAEP tests, averaging 10.6 points above the national public school average, while New Mexico ranked last on every test. Mississippi placed 29th on raw scores, up from 39th in 2019, and first once the Urban Institute adjusts for student demographics.
Kate Carter
PISA 2025 tested 15-year-olds in 91 education systems, and U.S. students scored 490 in reading, 502 in science, and 463 in math. That put them above the OECD average in reading and science and level with it in math, where 19 systems scored measurably higher.
Arthur Chen
Catalina Foothills Unified near Tucson posted the highest 2025 state test scores of any Arizona district with at least 5,000 students, followed by Scottsdale, Higley, Vail, and Chandler. Here are all 50 districts ranked.
Kate Carter
BASIS Chandler posted the highest 2025 state test scores of any Arizona public high school with at least 500 students. Arizona College Prep in Chandler Unified was the top traditional district school. Here are the top 25.
Mary Johnson
BASIS Scottsdale, Sequoya Elementary, Cocopah Middle School, and Desert Mountain High School posted the top 2025 state test scores among Scottsdale's public schools. Here is every Scottsdale-area public school with scores, by level.
Mary Johnson
Only 52 public schools in the country show a 0% proficiency rate in our data, and almost none of them are what the number implies. Most are very small, several teach newly arrived immigrants still learning English, and the figure often says more about testing rules than teaching.
Arthur Chen
PISA 2025 landed last week with the worst reading and math averages in the program's history, and one in five 15-year-olds now a low performer in every subject. The obvious suspect is screen time, and the evidence for it is real but narrower than the headlines. The sharper clue is who is falling: American elementary and middle school scores went up last year.
Arthur Chen
We compared 2025 and 2026 STAAR results for more than 8,000 Texas schools. Reading, math, and social studies each moved one to two points. Science moved seven, in both tested grades, and at a majority of schools. Here is where the gains landed, which districts moved most, and the caveat on science.
Arthur Chen
New Georgia Milestones results show gains in nearly every grade, with fourth, fifth, sixth and Algebra hitting all-time highs. Eighth grade math slipped to 46% proficient, and that's the grade that signals whether kids are ready for high school math.
Mary Johnson
We ranked every public high school in Georgia by its state-test proficiency. A Gwinnett magnet tops the list at 99.6%, but the more interesting story is what sits behind it: a wall of North Atlanta suburbs, and a handful of standouts far outside the metro.
Kate Carter
North Carolina released its 2025 school report cards. ACT scores jumped 13% and more students took AP courses, but the letter grades tell a harder story: more schools landed a D or F than an A or B. Here is the statewide breakdown, plus a look at the Triad.
Mary Johnson
A 9 out of 10 or a clean A feels like a verdict on a school's quality. In practice, most ratings built on raw proficiency track family income more than anything a school does. Here is what the big ratings actually measure, and the three numbers to read together instead.
Arthur Chen
The state test report comes home in the fall and most parents have no idea what to do with it. Here is what proficient actually means, why one year is not a verdict, and the difference between a score and a growth measure that schools rarely explain well.
Mary Johnson
Northern Virginia holds some of the strongest public high schools in the country, led by a selective magnet that passes the state test at essentially 100 percent. Here is how the comprehensive high schools of Fairfax, Loudoun, Arlington, and Prince William counties rank on Virginia’s SOL pass rates.
Arthur Chen
Across the Charlotte metro, public high school performance swings from the low 40s to the high 80s on North Carolina’s grade-level proficiency measure, and the strongest results sit in the Union County and north-Mecklenburg suburbs rather than inside the city. Here is how the suburbs rank.
Kate Carter
The National Blue Ribbon banner hangs in school lobbies across the country, but few parents know what it takes to earn one or what it actually signals. Here is how the U.S. Department of Education picks them, the two ways a school can qualify, and what the honor does and does not tell you.
Arthur Chen
A 15-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio does not mean 15 kids in your child's class. Here is the difference between ratio and class size, what the research on the Tennessee STAR study actually found, and when the number on a school profile is misleading you.
Arthur Chen
The Houston metro is one of the largest and most sprawling in the United States, and its suburban school landscape reflects that scale. Harris County alone has 1,171 public schools. Add Fort Bend, Montgomery, Brazoria, and Galveston counties and the picture grows significantly more complex. For families relocating to the Houston area or moving within it, school quality varies enough between suburbs, and between schools within the same suburb, that the decision of where to live shapes the educational experience as much as any other factor.
Kate Carter
