This Is the Best School District in America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Oct 4, 10:23AM EDT · Published Oct 2, 8:59AM EDT

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This Is the Best School District in America — © Courtesy of Radford School

The importance of education cannot be overstated. The federal government is among the organizations that measure it most closely. As a foundation of its yardsticks, it breaks education levels into several tiers–people who have less than high school education, those who are high school graduates, those with some college, those who are college graduates, and those who have post-college education. Education is tied to critical lifelong outcomes. People who are well educated tend to have higher household incomes. They tend to be more healthy. They are less likely to live in poverty. Some studies show they are likely to live longer.

To determine the best school district in America, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 2022 Best School Districts in America ranking from Niche, a platform for education data. The top school districts in America tend to cluster in certain areas, and just 13 states are home to at least one of the top 50. Illinois has 10 districts in the top 50, more than any other state. New York has nine, followed by Pennsylvania with seven, and New Jersey with six. These districts are typically just outside of major cities like New York and Chicago.

The best school districts have something else in common, which is that they are home to a relatively wealthy population. School districts rely on taxes for funding, so the more taxable wealth in an area, the more funding these districts have for facilities, faculty, extracurriculars, and more.

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The best schools also tend to have a student-to-teacher ratio lower than the nationwide ratio of 17:1. When schools can afford more teachers, students are able to get more personalized attention, which tends to benefit their overall academic performance.

To determine the best school district in America, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 2022 Best School Districts in America ranking from Niche, a platform for education data. The Niche ranking is based on academic and student life data from the U.S. Department of Education as well as student reviews submitted to Niche. Supplemental data on educational attainment at the school district level came from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey and are five-year estimates.

The best school district in America is Adlai E. Stevenson High School District No. 125. Here are the details:

Location: Lincolnshire, Illinois

Schools: 2

Student enrollment: 4,271

Area bachelor’s degree attainment rate: 70.6%

Student-to-teacher ratio: 15:1

Click here to read about the 2022 best school districts in America.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.