Where Are the Best Schools?

What makes a school great? Is it how much it spends on your kids, its dropout rate, or its safety record?

CardHub.com analyzed schools in more than 500 cities using several metrics, ranging from class size to the correlation between education level and future earnings.

The study doesn’t get too specific about how it arrived at rankings, but lists several sources: the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Center for Education Statistics, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, NeighborhoodScout.com, AmericasPromise.org, K12.com, and U.S. News & World Report.

Here are some of the more interesting findings:

• Life after a diploma. The five cities with the highest median earnings for high school graduates are Lexington Park, Md., $40,110; Torrington, Conn., $39,539; Anchorage, Alaska, $36,091; Mount Vernon, Wash., $35,491; and Concord, N.H., $35,439.
• Safest schools. The five cities with the lowest crime index are San Diego, Los Angeles, New York City, Riverside, Calif., and Las Vegas.
• Online schools. Florida has the most online public schools (37) and the second-most online private schools (6), behind Georgia. California, Washington and Oregon also rank high in both lists.
• Dropout rates. The states with the lowest dropout rates are Texas, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
• Classroom size and spending. North Dakota has the fewest students per classroom in the country, and New York City spends the most on each student enrolled in public school.