Education Report Calls Out North Dakota for Low Rankings

Reading that headline as a North Dakotan probably made you angry. You might think that North Dakota has a great school system. I mean, look at what we've done just recently. We built a new high school for Mandan and added some new elementary schools in north Bismarck. We seem to have the funding needed to make our schools great.

WalletHub ranked each state's education system from the best to the worst education systems in 2025. They made this determination by evaluating which states had the best early education programs. The WalletHub analyst behind the study explained that students/children with access to quality early education programs will have a jump start and have better success in the future, school and career-wise.

(Also Read: Top 5 Largest High Schools In North Dakota)

Personally, without concrete data showing that North Dakotans who did not attend preschool perform worse in later education, I won't be quite convinced that this ranking is accurate.

To be more specific about the metrics used, here's what the source looked at: the share of school districts that offer Pre-K programs, how many are enrolled in those Pre-K programs, income requirements for state Pre-K enrollment, Pre-K quality benchmarks met, school safety plans and audits, and presence of Pre-K waiting lists.

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With this, the study found that Maryland had the best education system in the country, followed by the District of Columbia.

The study indicates that Missouri has the worst education system. Missouri is followed by New Hampshire and Montana.

North Dakota wasn't named as the worst, or dead last, but the source did rank our education system at 46, which is very close to the bottom.

Overall, I don't agree with the premise of this study. I don't think we can rank an overall, statewide school system based on these early education metrics. What do you think? Send us your thoughts on this in the app.