Forbes List For Getting A Great Education

Below is an article from Forbes/GreatSchools.  It will give you an idea of the money put into education in different areas of the country and what that is all worth in educational dollars.  The important point of the article is spending more money doesn't guarantee the BEST EDUCATION POSSIBLE.  Check out the article below:

Falmouth, Maine, is a picturesque waterfront town 110 miles north of Boston with moderate housing costs — its median home price is $351,550 — per-student public-school spending just a touch above the state average and an enviable position at the top of the Forbes/GreatSchools list of places where your housing dollar will go the furthest in getting your children a great education.

Not much stands out to explain why the 2,100-student school district does so well. All seventh-graders have laptops, as do all middle-schoolers in Maine, thanks to a 2002 program that has distributed Apple MacBooks throughout the state. Teacher salaries are generous by Maine standards, at around $51,000 for a 10-year veteran, but low compared with $75,000 to $100,000 a teacher can earn in New York. At $10,000 a year, per-pupil spending is slightly above average for Maine but well below the $14,000 or so that big cities such as Chicago and New York spend. (Bing: What is the spending per pupil in your state?)

Here's one clue to the superior performance of schools in this 10,669-resident town, which was founded in 1658: Teacher turnover is extremely low. In the 13 years Barbara Powers has been school superintendent, only two teachers have left for jobs at other schools.

Here's one clue to the superior performance of schools in this 10,669-resident town, which was founded in 1658: Teacher turnover is extremely low. In the 13 years Barbara Powers has been school superintendent, only two teachers have left for jobs at other schools.

"People aren't using us as a launch pad to somewhere else," Powers says.

In partnership with GreatSchools, Forbes analyzed 17,589 towns and cities in the 49 states that administer standardized, statewide tests; Nebraska doesn't have one test for all schools in the state. GreatSchools also used the most recent data from the National Assessment for Educational Progress, a federal program that tests randomly selected students in fourth, eighth and 12th grades to assess learning and educational progress at the state level. Combining the data, GreatSchools determined an absolute score for each city in each state. It then graded each on a curve, with the highest-ranking city, Falmouth, representing 100. GreatSchools assesses more than 200,000 public schools, including public charter schools.