The Best Public School Systems in the U.S. by County and Region

For instance, one might be more willing to pay higher property taxes or a higher sticker price if that home is situated in a good school district, or in a county with generally high performing schools. Alternately, it may make more sense to move from a major city to its suburbs, rather than pay through the nose for a private school education. Sure, it’s an investment in your child’s future, but it’s that and an investment itself to buy into a better school system.

It’s not easy to figure this out, and most never have more than a limited picture of the educational landscape. That’s why we dealt with the dirty data to analyze and synthesize a ranking of the counties with the top performing schools and most equitable outcomes in each of the six major geographical regions in the United States.

The impact of well-to-do families, well-funded, staffed, and supplied schools shows up most clearly in performance statistics and standards, making it easy to overstate both achievement rates and the role played by income and tax policy.

Less money spent more judiciously can achieve more than a firehose of public funding and private investment. Thus, the mark of truly high quality public education is geographical, gender, and economic educational equity, the high performers in highly diverse communities, where none truly get left behind.

In our analysis we not only viewed performance as an average at the county level, but also factored in the performance gap between male and female students in math and reading, and the graduation and performance gaps between the student body as a whole and students with disabilities or from economically disadvantaged families. Complete equality in educational outcomes is a goal that some schools have managed to surpass: we counted higher performance and graduation rates for disadvantaged students as even better than equality.

States most affected by this limitation include New York and Iowa. In the former case, all of the top five counties in the northeast region were in N.Y. In the latter, while Iowa counties took only four of the top five in our ranking, these four counties were densely clustered, forming a contiguous region.

The states of Washington and North Carolina also exceeded our two county limit, while elsewhere only tough competition keeps the number of top ranked counties within our chosen parameters. If so, all laid claim to two out of the top five spots in their regions.

For the sake of geographical diversity, our top fives include at most two counties from any one state. Many common county names appear in multiple states, so one would do wise not to confuse them.

It’s that time of year again. The kids are heading back to school, and you know they’re going to need everything from new clothes to books and pencils. Why not apply for a great cashback credit card and get a little back for those purchases?

Get 2% Cash Back

While no cashback card is going to offer a specific bonus for back-to-school purchases, there are a few that will give you 2% back on all purchases. And that’s a great rate of return.

The Citi Double Cash card will give you 1% cash back when you make a purchase and another 1% back when you pay it off. It also has no annual fee and comes with a $100 sign-up bonus.

The Discover it card offers 5% back in quarterly rotating categories and 1% back for everything else. The current bonus category is for restaurants, so that won’t help much for school-related expenses.

The first year you have the card, though, Discover will match all of the cash back you earn. That means you’ll be earning 10% in the rotating categories and 2% for everything else, including school supplies. There’s no annual fee for this card.

The Biggest Bonuses

The other option is to go for the biggest sign-up bonus you can find. For no-fee cashback cards, you’ll typically max out at $150.

But the Wells Fargo Cash Wise Visa is currently offering an impressive $200 bonus if you spend $1,000 in the first three months. You’ll also get 1.5% cash back for all of your purchases.

If you’re willing to spend a little on a card, the American Express Blue Cash Preferred card also has a $200 sign-up bonus, plus it earns 6% back at supermarkets and 3% back at gas stations. Not bad for a $95 annual fee.

It’s Always a Good Time to Save a Few Bucks

Your kids need new outfits and school supplies, so you need a new cashback card to help you save a few bucks. After all, we all know how expensive those back-to-school shopping sprees can be.