US Counties With the Lowest Education Scores

2,859 US counties ranked by education score, from lowest to highest. First are Oglala Lakota County, SD (-5.76), Clarke County, GA (-3.83) and Ziebach County, SD (-3.14). The middle one of the 2,859 has 0.101.

What this measures

Test scores, how much children improve each school year, the trend in scores, and high school graduation. The share of adults with a college degree is left out. Every comparison on this site already adjusts for it, so a score that contained it would be adjusting for part of itself. This is the score here least tied to income. Source: .

A standard deviation is a typical gap between places.

For most measures, a national ranking mostly sorts places by income and by how urban they are. Each county’s own page compares it with the 50 counties most like it instead, which is often the fairer view.

The 100 lowest counties

More on education score

• US Counties With the Highest Education Scores
• Education score by US county: map by year and what it goes with

A ranking describes places, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All US rankings.