By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD — Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte Monday touted a new ranking that places the state’s schools in the top five nationally.
The ranking released Monday by WalletHub, a personal finance company based in Miami and owned by Evolution Finance, Inc., is based on 32 criteria that rank state schools on quality and safety including such things as test scores and dropout rates.
In its ranking New Hampshire schools are ranked fourth best in the country, behind Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey.
All the New England public schools are ranked in the top 10 nationally by the company, with the exception of Maine which is ranked 12th.
“New Hampshire is proud to have some of the best schools in the country, and this new ranking is a testament to our dedicated teachers, supportive parents, and hardworking students who helped make it possible,” Ayotte said about the ranking. “We’ll continue working each day to make our state an even better place to learn — from supporting our excellent public schools, to getting cell phones out of the classroom, to expanding education opportunities for families, and more. I know New Hampshire will keep striving for number 1 and prioritizing a best-in-class education for our kids.”
While New Hampshire schools are ranked fourth best in the country, New Hampshire provides the least percentage of state aid to public schools in the country, at 19 or 29 percent, depending on whether you include the Statewide Education Property Tax in the total which raises $363 million annually.
Property taxes provide 70 percent of the revenue to support public schools in New Hampshire which is the highest of any state in the country.
The national average for state aid to public schools is 47 to 48 percent.
Rep. David Luneau, D-Hopkinton, who is the ranking Democratic member of the House Education Committee, said the reason New Hampshire schools are ranked in the top five is the people of the Granite State who place a priority on high-quality public schools.
“It is not because the legislature underfunds (public education) or what Ayotte does to kneecap public education,” Luneau said, “it is because the general public supports public schools and strong outcomes for their kids.”
Despite New Hampshire providing the lowest state share of public school funding in the country, he said, “taxpayers stand up every time to make sure that the schools get what they need and they do their best, they do their best.”
The state should do more to recognize the priority granite staters have for supporting strong public schools instead of handouts for big companies like Apple and Amazon through the voucher program, Luneau said.
The state’s Education Freedom Account program has grown from over 1,000 students five years ago to 10,510 students this past school year and grown from $8 million to $52 million, with the vast majority of the funding a subsidy for parents whose children already are in religious or private schools and homeschool programs.
The single largest outflow from the program is usually to Amazon.
Ayotte noted that since she took office, state support for public schools is higher than ever before per pupil.
The state contribution to public education has changed little in the last few bienniums, but the number of school-age students has fallen as it has across the country.
Ayotte also pushed to remove cell phones from classrooms and the legislature responded with a bell-to-bell ban.
The governor did not veto a bill in the 2025 session that removed an earnings cap for the Education Freedom Account program, greatly expanding the number of eligible students although she had sought a requirement that students be in a public school to enter the voucher program.
She touted the expansion of educational opportunities for state students and signed the Parental Bill of Rights into law.
The governor also said she directed the Department of Education to develop best practices to improve reading outcomes, and the investment of $8 million in school safety measures and ensuring up-to-date training for first responders.
In the WalletHub ranking, New Hampshire was ranked fourth best in quality, but 15th for safety, which still gave New Hampshire schools the fourth best place in the country.
While New Hampshire ranks near the top in what it spends per student, and in quality in a number of surveys, the state has failed to satisfy a 30-year old state Supreme Court order to provide every child in the state with an adequate education and to pay for it.
Two recent education funding suits found the state had failed to meet its constitutional obligation to provide an adequate education and to fund it, one of which was upheld by the Supreme Court and one still pending before the state highest court.
The Ayotte administration through the Attorney General’s Office intends to ask the court to overturn the two Claremont education funding decisions that have been the foundation of the state’s public education system for the last 30 years.
The state’s brief including the request to overturn the Claremont decisions is due Aug. 8.
Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.