South Dakota School Systems Not Best, but Not Worst Either

Hard to believe, but back-to-school time is looming in the not-too-distant future and because of that, WalletHub did an investigation of the best and worst school districts in all 50 states.

How did we do in South Dakota? Not very well, unfortunately. South Dakota came in 41st out of 50 states and the District of Columbia. What criteria did WalletHub use to come to this conclusion? Let's take a peeky-poo shall we?

There were two main dimensions which were taken into account for this study and those were; a) school system quality and b) school system safety. Within those categories they looked at issues like high school graduation and dropout rates, pupil-to-teacher ratios, reading and math test scores, SAT and ACT scores, as well as the percentage of high school graduates who took those two tests, number of bullying incidents reported, number of disciplinary incidents, and more.

The presumption by many is; the more money a school system has, the better it should be, but more resources don't always mean better academic performance. However, in states where the workforce is better educated, they tend to make more money, which in turn translates into a better bottom line for those states.

South Dakota, overall, scored 37th in the school system quality category and 48th in the school system safety ranking, landing us in that overall 41st position.