The Centennial State is now the No. 1 state in the country for education, the result of a state-led effort to improve student outcomes.
The rankings, published by U.S. News & World Report, attribute the state’s success to Gov. Jared Polis. Before taking the helm, Polis founded a charter school, chaired the State Board of Education and was a ranking member on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in Congress, according to CBS News.
Throughout his seven-year tenure as governor, Colorado has experienced significant boosts in three areas: overall educational attainment, two-year degree program graduation rates and preschool enrollment.
In the 2025-26 school year, Colorado’s education system boasted 179 school districts, more than 870,000 students and an 85.6% high school graduation rate, the state’s highest in nearly a decade.
The state’s community college system is also its largest provider of higher education, comprising 13 institutions that serve more than 130,000 students, according to U.S. News.
Its universal preschool program, which launched only in 2023, served more than 45,000 students last school year, a success largely attributed to the state’s low poverty rate, according to Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“The result is that our children here in Colorado are less often raised in poverty than are children in many other states, so we are not asking our schools to pull off the same superhuman lifts as other states do,” Welner told the news outlet.
While Colorado is deemed the nation’s best for education overall, New Jersey, ranked No. 2, tops the list for preK through 12. For higher education, Florida is ranked No. 1.
Below is a brief list of the top 10 states for education overall:
- Colorado
- New Jersey
- Florida
- Wyoming
- Wisconin
- Utah
- Massachusetts
- Washington
- South Dakota
- North Carolina
View the complete rankings here.
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