School District Ranking Methodology

At Teacher.org, we believe that teachers inspire our future. To better achieve that goal, we strongly feel that teachers need the best support they can get. In hopes to promote a strong teacher support system in school districts across the U.S., we have scored and ranked school districts based on how well they support teachers.

In order to better understand how a school district can support a teacher, we must first define the areas where teachers need support. The first is class size, the higher the overall student-teacher ratio the less able a teacher is to focus on each student's needs. The second area is administrator and support staff availability to teachers for all their classroom and teaching needs. The third and final area measures student proficiency levels on state examinations, which provides insight on the overall learning environment provided by the school district for students of the community. By analyzing and scoring these three areas we are able to provide an overall ranking of school districts in each state.

Our ranking methodology started with obtaining school district data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data 2013-2014 (http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/ccddata.asp) and U.S. Department of Education EdFacts Data Files 2012-2013 (http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/edfacts/data-files/index.html).

Once all the district data was obtained, the school districts with the following characteristics were excluded:

• Nonoperational agencies as reported in data files
• Special or non-traditional agencies as defined by NCES (Agency Type Codes: 4-8)
• Agencies where all associated schools are charter schools
• Agencies where total number of full-time equivalency teachers was less than 100
• Agencies where total number of students was less than 1000
• Agencies where total number of schools was less than two
• Agencies where total number of support staff was zero
• Agencies that did not report student proficiency levels on state examinations

The rankings were based on the combined score of the three equally weighted areas as detailed above, these areas were:

1. Student/Teacher Ratio
2. Teacher/Support Staff Ratio
3. Combined RLA & Math Student Percent Proficiency

Once the school district agency filter process was applied, the ranking process proceeded as follows for each state separately:

1. School districts that operate as a Supervisory Union (e.g. NYC Schools) had all the data from its local school district components combined and the Supervisory Union was represented as a whole.
2. The agency with the best student-teacher ratio of the state was given a score of 100 and other school district agencies were scored as a percentage of this score.
3. The agency with the best teacher-support staff ratio of the state was given a score of 100 and other school district agencies were scored as a percentage of this score.
4. The agency with the best combined RLA & Math student percent proficiency scores was given a score of 100 and other school district agencies were scored as a percentage of this score.
5. The three equally weighted area scores were then averaged to produce a final overall score.
6. Overall scores were then sorted and listed from the highest to lowest.

The table below lists information by state, including the number of school districts analyzed and the number of top ranked districts.

State	School Districts Analyzed	School Districts Ranked
Alabama	111	30
Alaska	13	5
Arizona	88	30
Arkansas	97	30
California	437	50
Colorado	53	20
Connecticut	106	30
Delaware	16	5
Florida	64	20
Georgia	148	30
Hawaii	1	N/A
Idaho	29	10
Illinois	259	50
Indiana	159	50
Iowa	82	30
Kansas	71	20
Kentucky	118	30
Louisiana	66	20
Maine	55	20
Maryland	24	10
Massachusetts	160	50
Michigan	220	50
Minnesota	108	30
Mississippi	102	30
Missouri	141	30
Montana	16	5
Nebraska	31	10
Nevada	9	N/A
New Hampshire	59	20
New Jersey	281	50
New Mexico	33	10
New York	383	50
North Carolina	108	30
North Dakota	10	5
Ohio	289	50
Oklahoma	81	30
Oregon	64	20
Pennsylvania	342	50
Rhode Island	26	10
South Carolina	69	20
South Dakota	15	5
Tennessee	107	30
Texas	419	50
Utah	30	10
Vermont	4	N/A
Virginia	115	30
Washington	109	30
West Virginia	47	20
Wisconsin	137	30
Wyoming	21	10

We do realize that there is far more to consider in defining which school district provides the best support for teachers, but we believe that providing this information can help highlight the need for teacher support across the country.

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