You’ve undoubtedly heard about certain States being ranked such and such, compared to each other on differentr issues, but are you aware of the ranking source and what it means?

A commonly referenced source is the Annie E. Casey Foundation, not exactly a household name. Their State K-12 education research falls under their Kids Count program. The current State rankings are found in the 2025 KIDS COUNT Data Book: State Trends in Child Well Being.

This report provided interesting statistics covering multiple issues pertaining to US children, ranging from health to education, so it is well worth perusing.

They publish a State-to-State comparison on such matters as Overall Well-Being (page 15), Economic Well-Being (page 19), Health (page 23), as well as Family and Community (page 25). Each topic has a page or so of discussion.

Note that the Report also includes an online interactive part where interested readers can explore more details on a state-by-state level.

For our purposes, we are interested in the K-12 Education section. Not surprisingly, the overall U.S. data is beyond deplorable. As of 2024, 70% of US fourth Graders do NOT Read at minimum grade level requirements. 73% of US eight Graders do NOT understand Math at minimum grade level requirements. Here are the State-by-State ratings (page 21)…

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE INFORGRAPHIC: A 2025 State-to State Comparison of Education

There is no good news here for anyone, as the best States are still producing third-world country results (60%+ failure rates!), while the worst States are criminally bad (80%+ failure rates).

What this CLEARLY says is that the DOEd plan to turn over more authority and money to the States is a disastrously bad idea, as not a single State is even remotely close to being competent! Read this for the best solution.

Another message screaming out here is that Critical Thinking must be formally taught in K-12, starting yesterday. (At this point, zero States formally teach Critical Thinking.) For the first time ever, we now have a powerful tool for States to do this: K-12 Critical Thinking Standards.

If you genuinely appreciate the seriousness of this crisis, and are willing to dedicate some time and effort to fix this, contact me for info.

©2026 John Droz, Jr. All rights reserved.

P.S. — Here is other worthwhile national rating info on each State.

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