NOTE: The results for only about 700 school districts out of the 2,800 rated in the 2007 Education Quotient™ study are included on this site.

When the subject of business, education and work force comes up, most of us have a tendency to focus on colleges and universities. That’s because the fastest-growing sectors of our economy revolve around new and emerging technologies, like healthcare, biotechnology, life sciences, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology, to name just a few.

Those are all “hot” technology sectors that promise, and usually deliver, huge rewards to both owners and workers alike. For companies in these areas, the starting point for prospective employees usually begins with a college degree and quickly escalates from there.

According to most estimates, roughly 28 percent of all U.S. adults over the age of 25 now possess at least a bachelor’s degree, and it is from this pool of workers that most knowledge-based companies draw the bulk of their employees. That means about 72 percent of U.S. adults do not have a college diploma.

Since the nationwide unemployment rate these days is less than 5 percent, simple math tells us that the vast majority of U.S. workers still come from the ranks of high school graduates. In other words, it represents the most significant sector of the labor pool, particularly for manufacturers.

The reason we do it is to provide our readers, the majority of whom are CEOs of small to mid-sized manufacturing companies, with a basis for comparing the education level of the work force they are likely to encounter in various communities throughout the U.S.

Many of these same business executives are actively engaged in the process of comparing locations around the country in order to determine the best location for a future manufacturing (or distribution center, call center, back office, etc.) facility, and these ratings provide them with an important tool to evaluate the high school graduate work force in those prospective communities.

How We Calculated the Rankings

This year’s EQ study includes all public secondary school districts in the United States with an enrollment of at least 3,300 students. In all, we evaluated 2,819 districts nationwide that, together, have a combined enrollment of more than 35 million students. (Click here to see List of School Districts Included in the 2007 Education Quotient Ratings). Because we began our data collection effort in the spring of this year (prior to the end of the 2005-2006 academic year), we used the 2004-2005 school year as the base year for our study.

As in years past, a district’s EQ rating is a weighted average of three major categories.

The ultimate objective of our schools is to educate our children, and college board scores are one way of comparing how much students in a particular district learned. While there may very well be other, better tests taken by high school students, those tests are generally limited to a particular state or states and, consequently, are not comparable nationwide. The reason we use college board test scores is because they are still the only common test that high school students around the country take.

The GO also includes the district’s graduation rate. Because there are literally dozens of ways to calculate a district’s graduation rate — most districts, not surprisingly, use whatever looks the best — it was necessary for us to establish our own definition in order to ensure comparability when we looked at districts nationwide. Therefore, we compared a district’s 11th grade students in the fall semester of 2003 with the number of students who graduated in the spring semester of 2005.

The U.S. Armed Forces have long used graduation from high school as a predictor of future success, not because it means that high school graduates are rocket scientists, but rather because it demonstrates that they finish what they start. This is a highly valued characteristic among employers, particularly as unemployment rates decline and the labor market tightens.

The second category is the Resource Index (RI), which attempts to measure a community’s financial commitment to public education. It includes such things as per-pupil expenditures and student-teacher ratio, and the beginning and average salaries for teachers.

The final category is the Community Index (CI), which looks at the educational and income levels of the adult population, and the child poverty rates. It is primarily used as a benchmark for sociological observations and accounts for only 5 percent of the overall EQ score.

This category includes the percentage of the adult population in the district with at least a high school degree, the percentage of the adult population with at least a college degree, the average household income in the district and the district’s childhood poverty level.

In calculating the overall Education Quotient (EQ) score, each school district was compared against the other 2,800 districts (i.e., ranked 1 to 2,800) in each of the components (i.e., college board scores, graduation rates, per-pupil expenditures, etc.) in order to come up with a ranking for that component. The components were then grouped together in their appropriate category — Graduate Outcome, Resource Index and Community Index — and compared against the other 2,800 districts in order to come up with an overall ranking.

These rankings were then converted into percentile rankings — 99 being the highest, 1 being the lowest — to show how that district compares with other districts nationwide within that category. These percentile numbers are shown for each district in the charts accompanying this article.

On the opposite end of the scale, school districts that ranked in the bottom 25 percent were given a Yellow Flag, while districts in the bottom 10 percent received a Red Flag designation.

The remaining school districts — accounting for 42 percent of all districts surveyed — were given a Green Flag designation. These districts can be considered average.

A Few Last Words

The most important thing to understand about any ranking is that, despite the underpinning of large volumes of data, it is still somewhat subjective in the sense that the people who design the study get to decide what factors are important, as well as the relative weight of those factors.

In the Education Quotient, we long ago decided to put the most weight on the outcome. In other words, what did the students learn and did they graduate?

That’s not to say that we didn’t look at other factors, like teacher salaries, class size and per-pupil spending. We did, but we look at those as simply part of the means to the end, and not the end itself.

Finally, there is a natural tendency for people to look at school districts that fared poorly in these ratings and blame the teachers. (Click here to read “COMMENTARY: When it Comes to Outstanding Educators, Saying Thanks Is Probably Not Enough, but it’s a Start.” . We would suggest, instead, that they first look in the mirror if they really want to solve the problem of underperforming schools. The real solution rests with the parents and how much interest they take in their children’s education.

The only exception to this trend can be found in the “Farm Belt” communities of the Upper Midwest, where there is a dramatically higher percentage of Gold Medal and Blue Ribbon school districts, despite the fact that adult income and adult education levels are below the national norm.

Raising and educating children is by far the most difficult task any of us will ever undertake, and it requires constant effort and attention.

Kids are kids, and their natural tendency is to blow off homework, goof off in school, and spend their lives eating junk food, hanging around with their friends, and trying to break the Guinness Book of Records for most sleep in a 24-hour period.

That’s why they have parents. Remember, teachers only have our kids seven hours a day, five days a week. We have them the rest of the time and it’s our job, as parents and as adults, to send them to school ready and eager to learn.

Their future, as well as the future of our country, depends upon how well we accomplish this seemingly simple task.

Click here to read Commentaries on the Importance of Public Education

Bill King is the chief editor of Expansion Management magazine and can be reached at BillKing@Penton.com.

Michael Keating is the senior research editor of Expansion Management magazine and can be reached at mkeating@Penton.com.