A new study from WalletHub found that Connecticut has the second-best public school systems in the country. The study, which was published on July 21, looked at test scores, funding, class-size and school safety, among other factors.
Researchers found that Connecticut excelled in nearly all these areas. For example, Connecticut has the fifth-highest reading test scores out of every state and the District of Columbia, and is tied with California and D.C. for the highest median ACT scores.
Connecticut also has the third-highest share of students who receive a 3 or higher on AP exams, and 6.6% of Connecticut public schools are in the top 700 public schools nationwide, WalletHub reports.
“Connecticut also makes time in the classroom easier for both teachers and students with the eighth-best pupil-to-teacher ratio in the country,” WalletHub said.
Despite the strong praise from WalletHub, the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE) reports that only between 50-60% of students across all grade levels met English language proficiency standards in the 2024-2025 academic year.
Other recent studies show lower rates of reading and oral proficiency. The state-run EdSight found that only around 18% of students met or exceeded overall English language proficiency standards in the state.
According to the most recent Nation’s Report Card, which was released in January, fewer than one-third of students are meeting the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Proficient Level in reading. This study only looks at fourth and eighth-graders.
NAEP found the “2024 average scale score for Connecticut is not significantly different from National public.”
And the academic successes that WalletHub identified are not uniform. A study released earlier this year found that Connecticut had the second-highest amount of racial inequality in educational outcomes in the country. This study compared educational attainment among black and white students in each state. It used data from the US Census Bureau, the National Center for Education Statistics, and the ACT and College Board.
Connecticut has the fifth-highest spending per student in the country, at $24,453, according to the United States Census.
However, academic scores are not the only thing that WalletHub takes into consideration.
“Another area where Connecticut stands out is safety,” the study states. “The Constitution State is one of only 17 states that require regular audits of school safety. Additionally, Connecticut has the lowest prevalence of illegal drugs on school property, the second-lowest youth incarceration rate and the six-lowest share of students who have carried any kind of weapon on school property.”
The only state with better school systems than Connecticut is Massachusetts, according to WalletHub.
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Given the results of multiple objective test scores, this report and its ranking is nonsense. In 2022, the NAEP score for CT revealed that the percentage students who scored at or above the NAEP proficient level was 34%. In 2025, “fewer than one-third” were in that category. Where I come from that is regression from an already dismal level. Only in an environment in which scores across the country are uniformly dismal, might “second best” be considered an achievement.
Take Guilford, an upper middle class and bedroom community for Yale, where the average household income is $175,248, the average medium household income $130,036, where teachers are paid an average of over $93,000 annually, and the student/teacher ratio is 12:1 (five less than the national average of 17:1). State test scores reveal that 24% of Guilford’s 3,100 students, or 744, are not proficient in reading and 34%, or 1,054, are not proficient in math. In what world is this remotely acceptable? Guilford also fares poorly in college readiness, and other categories, with many students admitted to college taking remedial courses.
On the other hand, Guilford is on the front lines of efforts to indoctrinate students in the tenets off CRT, DEI, ESJ, gender confusion, and unjustified climate alarmism. But, as to academics, its reputation has fallen precipitously. Revealingly, superintendent Paul Freeman introduced a “phonics initiative” in 2021, 21 years after the National Reading Panel proclaimed “The Science of Reading” (good old phonics) to be the superior method of teaching reading. And his more recent embrace of “Portrait of a Graduate” is noticeably bereft of academic goals and rigor. One of its chief goals, “critical thinking,” completely misses the point that critical thinking is domain specific and requires the mastery of a core of substantive knowledge in the relevant subject domain. Had he been the least familiar with the work of cognitive psychologists, he might have known this, but that’s not a subject covered in education schools. The point is, reading proficiency is based not only on the ability to decode words through phonics, but on the mastery of the vocabulary and core knowledge necessary to grasp the meaning of texts. The core knowledge component is almost totally absent in Connecticut’s public schools.
For further information, readers are invited to read the book “National Proficiency Pandemic: Reading and Math Disaster: 2022 NAEP Scores” available on the Greater Education Council of Connecticut web site at: greatereducationcouncilofCT.org
See, in particular, Part 3: “The Missing Link: Core Knowledge, The Path to Educational Success.” Go to Resources, then Books.
I checked out who is Wallethub. Highly suspicious is the best answer. Here is a quote of an investigation on them.
“There’s no reason for anyone to take the WalletHub survey seriously. But if it does bother anyone, consider the survey I mentioned at the start that described Reno as a cultural wilderness. In the years since, the city has hosted an annual jazz festival, formed an opera company. Today there is a philharmonic and each summer there are 30 days devoted to arts events that draw both locals and tourists by the tens of thousands. And that little Ralston Street art gallery is now on Liberty Street – four stories occupying a half a block.”