What the Highest- and Lowest-Scoring Counties Have in Common

Ranking tables are easy to publish and easy to misread. A list of the counties with the highest School Scores tells you which counties top the table in the current data year; it does not tell you why they top it, or whether the counties at the bottom are struggling in the ways a low rank implies. This analysis looks at both ends of the School Score distribution at once — the 15 highest-scoring and 15 lowest-scoring counties in the current NCES-backed dataset — and asks the more useful question: what do the extremes actually have in common?

Three patterns hold up under inspection. Completion rates move closely with the score. Funding is directionally aligned but much noisier. And both tails cluster geographically in ways that point to state finance formulas and district structure rather than county-by-county effort. Each pattern comes with a caveat, because a percentile composite rewards and penalizes counties for conditions they do not fully control.

How the Score Is Built (and Why That Matters Here)

The SchoolsByCounty School Score is a percentile-rank composite of available NCES graduation-rate and school-finance metrics, scaled 0 to 100. A score of 90 means the county outranks 90% of scored counties on those inputs — nothing more. Because the score is relative, the extremes are guaranteed to exist: some county must be first and some county must be last, even in a year when the underlying metrics improve everywhere.

That construction shapes how the tables below should be read. The counties at the top are not certified excellent, and the counties at the bottom are not certified failing. They are the counties where the measured inputs — completion and finance — diverge most from the national middle.

The 15 Highest School Scores

Ranked by School Score from highest to lowest, with the completion and finance figures that feed the composite shown alongside. Each county name links to its full profile.

• Rank

  1

  County

  Alpine County

  State

  California

  School Score

  100

  Graduation Rate

  N/A

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $23,219

• Rank

  2

  County

  Loup County

  State

  Nebraska

  School Score

  99.5

  Graduation Rate

  N/A

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $18,703

• Rank

  3

  County

  Keweenaw County

  State

  Michigan

  School Score

  99.3

  Graduation Rate

  N/A

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $18,000

• Rank

  4

  County

  Treasure County

  State

  Montana

  School Score

  98.1

  Graduation Rate

  N/A

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $14,412

• Rank

  5

  County

  San Juan County

  State

  Colorado

  School Score

  97.3

  Graduation Rate

  N/A

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $13,639

• Rank

  6

  County

  Esmeralda County

  State

  Nevada

  School Score

  97.3

  Graduation Rate

  N/A

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $13,673

• Rank

  7

  County

  Hinsdale County

  State

  Colorado

  School Score

  97

  Graduation Rate

  N/A

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $13,446

• Rank

  8

  County

  Petroleum County

  State

  Montana

  School Score

  96.9

  Graduation Rate

  N/A

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $13,419

• Rank

  9

  County

  Golden Valley County

  State

  Montana

  School Score

  96.5

  Graduation Rate

  N/A

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $13,208

• Rank

  10

  County

  Doddridge County

  State

  West Virginia

  School Score

  96.5

  Graduation Rate

  97.0%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $12,943

• Rank

  11

  County

  Wyoming County

  State

  Pennsylvania

  School Score

  96.4

  Graduation Rate

  97.0%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $12,718

• Rank

  12

  County

  Cameron Parish

  State

  Louisiana

  School Score

  96.3

  Graduation Rate

  97.0%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $12,683

• Rank

  13

  County

  Hunterdon County

  State

  New Jersey

  School Score

  95.3

  Graduation Rate

  95.8%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $15,445

• Rank

  14

  County

  Kenedy County

  State

  Texas

  School Score

  95.2

  Graduation Rate

  N/A

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $12,551

• Rank

  15

  County

  Thomas County

  State

  Nebraska

  School Score

  95

  Graduation Rate

  N/A

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $12,386

The 15 Lowest School Scores

Ranked by School Score from lowest to highest. These counties sit at the bottom of the same percentile distribution, and their companion metrics show why.

• Rank

  1

  County

  Wheeler County

  State

  Oregon

  School Score

  0.4

  Graduation Rate

  33.6%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $4,865

• Rank

  2

  County

  Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area

  State

  Alaska

  School Score

  0.5

  Graduation Rate

  66.3%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $3,314

• Rank

  3

  County

  Candler County

  State

  Georgia

  School Score

  0.8

  Graduation Rate

  21.5%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $5,074

• Rank

  4

  County

  Elmore County

  State

  Idaho

  School Score

  0.9

  Graduation Rate

  65.3%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $4,883

• Rank

  5

  County

  Bent County

  State

  Colorado

  School Score

  1.2

  Graduation Rate

  57.9%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $5,152

• Rank

  6

  County

  Pima County

  State

  Arizona

  School Score

  1.7

  Graduation Rate

  71.8%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $5,007

• Rank

  7

  County

  Coos County

  State

  Oregon

  School Score

  1.8

  Graduation Rate

  66.8%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $5,291

• Rank

  8

  County

  Washington County

  State

  Oklahoma

  School Score

  2.5

  Graduation Rate

  73.7%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $5,214

• Rank

  9

  County

  Oklahoma County

  State

  Oklahoma

  School Score

  3

  Graduation Rate

  71.0%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $5,428

• Rank

  10

  County

  Manistee County

  State

  Michigan

  School Score

  3.8

  Graduation Rate

  58.9%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $5,655

• Rank

  11

  County

  Canyon County

  State

  Idaho

  School Score

  3.9

  Graduation Rate

  76.2%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $5,060

• Rank

  12

  County

  Latimer County

  State

  Oklahoma

  School Score

  3.9

  Graduation Rate

  74.4%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $5,455

• Rank

  13

  County

  Randolph County

  State

  Indiana

  School Score

  4

  Graduation Rate

  77.2%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $4,410

• Rank

  14

  County

  Leflore County

  State

  Mississippi

  School Score

  4.1

  Graduation Rate

  75.0%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $5,375

• Rank

  15

  County

  Denali Borough

  State

  Alaska

  School Score

  4.2

  Graduation Rate

  72.0%

  Per-Pupil Spending

  $5,596

Pattern 1: Completion Tracks the Score — Partly by Construction

The clearest divide between the two groups is graduation rate. The 15 highest-scoring counties report an average graduation rate of 96.7%, while the 15 lowest-scoring counties average 64.1%. Against a national average of 87.5%, the top group sits comfortably above the benchmark and the bottom group falls well below it.

Part of this relationship is mechanical: graduation rate is an input to the School Score, so counties with strong completion are pulled toward the top of the composite by construction. The pattern is still informative — it confirms the score is not being driven by finance data alone — but it should not be cited as independent evidence that high-scoring counties "produce" better completion. The score and the graduation rate are partly the same measurement wearing two labels.

Pattern 2: Funding Separates the Groups, but with Overlap

Per-pupil spending also differs between the tails, but less cleanly. The high-score group averages $14,696 per pupil against $5,052 in the low-score group, with the national average at $13,239. In the current data year the two groups happen not to overlap on spending, but the gap between group averages is still proportionally smaller than the gap in scores.

This is the correlation-is-not-causation zone. Spending in these tables is nominal — unadjusted for regional labor costs, transportation burden, or enrollment scale — so a rural county with long bus routes can out-spend a suburban county while operating leaner classrooms. The reasonable reading is that the extremes of the score distribution tend to sit on different funding tiers, not that dollars produced the scores or that matching a top county's budget would replicate its results.

Pattern 3: The Tails Cluster by State, Not by Chance

Neither tail is a random draw from the map. Among the highest-scoring counties: The most represented states are Montana (3), Colorado (2), and Nebraska (2), together accounting for 7 of 15 counties. Among the lowest-scoring counties: The most represented states are Oklahoma (3), Alaska (2), and Idaho (2), together accounting for 7 of 15 counties.

State clustering at both ends is the strongest hint that the score is picking up policy environments as much as local performance. Graduation reporting rules, state funding formulas, district consolidation history, and the mix of county-wide versus fragmented districts all vary by state — and all of them move the inputs to the composite. A county that changed nothing about its schools would still drift in these rankings if its state changed how it funds districts or counts cohorts.

The practical consequence: comparing a county against others in the same state is more informative than comparing it against the national tails. Two counties in the same state share a finance formula and a reporting regime; two counties picked from opposite ends of this table share almost nothing except their position in a distribution.

What the Extremes Cannot Tell You

Three limitations matter most at the tails of any percentile ranking. First, small counties are volatile: with one small cohort of students, a handful of outcomes can move a county many places in a single release. Second, missing or suppressed federal data thins the inputs for some counties, so a low score can reflect sparse reporting rather than weak schools. Third, a county average can hide enormous district-to-district variation — a county with one strong district and one struggling district can land anywhere in the table.

None of this makes the ranking useless. It makes the ranking a screening tool. The linked county profiles, state report cards, and district dashboards are where a score turns into an actual understanding of a school system.

How to Use This Analysis

If a county you are researching appears in either table, treat that as a prompt for specific follow-up rather than a conclusion:

• Open the county profile and check which input is driving the position — completion, finance, or both. The same score can have very different anatomy.
• Compare the county against its state average before its national rank; the state baseline removes most of the policy noise described above.
• For small counties, check whether the school system serves a few hundred students. If so, expect year-to-year movement and read multiple releases before concluding anything.
• Use the full national tables on the insights page and the county comparison view to place any county in context, rather than anchoring on its appearance in a 15-row tail.

Methodology

The School Score is a percentile-rank composite of available NCES graduation-rate (Common Core of Data, four-year ACGR) and school-finance (F-33 survey) metrics, scaled 0-100 across scored counties. Group averages in this article are unweighted means across the 15 counties in each tail; counties with missing companion metrics are excluded from the relevant average. Spending figures are current expenditure per fall enrollment, excluding capital outlays and debt service, and are not adjusted for regional cost differences. Tables regenerate when the underlying dataset updates, so the county lists may shift between data releases.