Florida has been crowned the best in the US for education, thanks to its high graduation rates and low tuition

Americans living in a red state get the best education, even though the governor has been criticized for using the classroom for his culture war.

Florida tops the list for the second year in a row as Governor Ron DeSantis redesigned the education system by banning discussions about sexuality and gender and letting parents decide what materials are used.

While the laws have sparked criticism, a new report found that Florida performs best in college readiness among children in kindergarten (pre-K) through 12th grade, and that state universities have a 74 percent graduation rate.

However, the state lagged behind in elementary school students’ math and reading scores.

The other states that followed Florida were Utah, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Colorado.

“Florida is the number one state in the country when it comes to education,” DeSantis said last month.

“By focusing on core academic subjects and rejecting indoctrination in the classroom, we have become a standard-bearer for educational excellence.”

The ranking was conducted by American news and world reportusing ten metrics split into two groups: higher education and pre-K through 12th grade.

Statistics include early childhood education enrollment, college readiness, reading and math scores, high school graduation rate, debt at graduation, college tuition and fees, educational attainment, and grade two and four graduation rates year.

Florida had the highest on-time graduation rates at public colleges that offer both two- and four-year degrees.

And those who attended four-year schools had the lowest average costs for tuition and fees — the average annual tuition is about $6,000.

Covering pre-K through high school, Florida showed top scores in preparing students for college, helping them take the SAT, ACT or both.

The state ranks 12th enrolled in preschool and ninth in high school graduation rate, but ranked 21st and 32nd for reading and math scores in eighth grade.

Governor Ron DeSantis has redesigned the education system in recent years by banning discussions about sexuality and gender and letting parents decide what materials are used

While the laws have sparked criticism, a new report found that Florida performs best in college readiness among children in kindergarten (pre-K) through 12th grade, and that state universities have a 74 percent graduation rate

“Since Governor DeSantis took office, Florida has prioritized education by offering historic salary increases to teachers, ensuring students could return to in-person learning after the COVID-19 pandemic, removing woke ideology from the classroom, eliminating Common Core and transition to an accountability progress monitoring system,” the Florida Department of Education said in a statement rack.

However, DeSantis’ move has allowed schools to take matters into their own hands.

The Escambia County School District, located in the Florida Panhandle, has removed dictionaries from library shelves out of fear that students would look up words like “sex” due to the governor’s restrictions on what could be taught in schools.

Although Florida tops the list overall, a school in Arizona was considered the best high school in America.

In March, the University of Florida laid off all staff in positions associated with the University of Florida Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).

This move, exposed in an administrative memo, served as the final step in the state’s mission to ignore DEI initiatives from public agencies.

U.S. News and World Report released a separate report last month announcing the nation’s top 100 schools from nearly 18,000 eligible institutions.

BASIS Peoria on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona, ranks first this year, up from twelfth in last year’s rankings.

It is aimed at students in fifth through 12th grades, who are predominantly Asian – with 70 percent of students from this ethnicity, followed by 15 percent white and six percent Hispanic. Fifty-three percent of the students are men and 47 percent are women.

BASIS Peoria was closely followed in the rankings by Signature School in Evansville, Indiana, and Tesla STEM High School in Redmond, Washington.

Schools are ranked based on five categories with different weightings – including students’ willingness to attend college, breadth of curriculum and state assessment proficiency.

The highest-ranked schools are those with the most students who earned exceptional scores on the state assessments in math, reading and science.