These five cities ranked at the bottom of the list for education, according to our survey. What do you think: did we get it right?
Of the cities and towns we surveyed, these five were at the bottom of the list in the education category. The Golden State isn’t so golden when it comes to schools — 4 of the 5 worst cities are located in southern California. Here, we round up the stinkers in the education category.
See our list of best cities for education
(Our list was compiled by using a list of the top 100 cities by population, adding in well-known smaller cities too, and removing cities so close to other large cities that they would have similar data. Then we crunched numbers in 7 education criteria categories to come up with our list.)
Bakersfield, CA
A lack of quality preschools and not enough teachers per student pulled Bakersfield to the bottom of our list.
Riverside, CA
More bad news for Cali: Riverside has one of the highest teacher/student ratios in the nation, with more than 24 pupils per instructor.
Fresno, CA
Poor test scores, a high teacher/student ration and a dearth of quality preschool rank Fresno near the bottom of our list.
Mobile, AL
The only non-California city on our list, Mobile schools have to improve math scores to move up our list. Access to quality preschools is also a problem.
