Delaware Education: A Comprehensive Look at Ranking Statistics and Influencing Factors

Finding the best public school is a priority for many families. Public schools play a vital role in their respective communities. Public schools improve their communities and the welfare of children. Public schools welcome all children, no matter their income level, disability, or previous academic performance. Many schools provide school meals, which helps children from food-insecure families get nutritious food every day.

National Rankings and Delaware’s Position

Delaware’s ranking as 45th in the nation for education outcomes in the 2024 KIDS COUNT Data Book highlights the multifaceted challenges and influences affecting children's development and education in the state. This annual, 50-state report assesses data on 16 indicators across four domains: economic well-being, education, health, and family and community factors to determine how children across the country fare in comparison to one another. Based on the latest figures, Delaware ranks 8th in economic well-being, 25th in child health, 32nd in family and community, and 31st in overall child well-being.

While there is room for improvement in each of these domains, the greatest opportunity for growth exists in education. Some shortcomings can be attributed to post-pandemic difficulties and those issues exacerbated by it, such as chronic absenteeism and poverty.

Key Education Metrics in Delaware

Delaware’s ranking in the education domain is based on four criteria:

The proportion of young children (ages three and four) not enrolled in school (55%).
Fourth graders not proficient in reading (75%).
Eighth graders not proficient in math (82%).
High school students not graduating on time (20%).

Two of the four measures in this indicator rely on students’ scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests in reading and mathematics. Standardized testing scores such as these are one common tool for understanding how well students understand core concepts in reading, writing, and mathematics.

Concerning Proficiency Rates

This year’s Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT Data Book shows 75 percent of Delaware fourth-graders are not proficient in reading, 82 percent of eighth-graders are not proficient in math and 25 percent of students are chronically absent. This data paints a concerning picture of the state of education in Delaware.

Delaware KIDS COUNT Director Janice Barlow says reading proficiency rates are particularly alarming. Because fourth grade is kind of that pivot point where kids go from learning to read, to reading to learn, and so if they are not proficient by fourth grade, then they are going to have trouble keeping up in other subjects as they move on. Barlow notes declining math proficiency could put students at a disadvantage in the workforce.

Other Key Indicators

This year’s education numbers also show 55 percent of kids ages 3 and 4 are not yet in school, and the number of high school students not graduating on time almost doubled from 2019 to 2021 to 20 percent.

Chronic Absenteeism

Barlow says chronic absentee levels are coming down from mid-pandemic levels, but remain much higher than before. Some kids are chronically absent because they have trouble getting to school, safe routes and things like that, she says. Other pieces of the equation may have been impacted by the pandemic. There are questions around how sick is too sick to send my kid to school? If there are sniffles should I keep them home?

Measuring School Success in Delaware

The Delaware School Success Framework (DSSF) is a statewide tool for measuring school success and communicating it to the public, evaluating schools in key areas like academic achievement, academic progress, school quality, student success, graduation rates, and English language proficiency. Since 2014, academic metrics have been based on students’ scores on the Delaware State System of Assessments (DeSSA) and the Smarter Balanced Assessments in Mathematics and English Language Arts/Literacy, the newest in a series of testing systems that have been utilized by the state. Schools with low scores according to the DSSF can then be identified and supported via comprehensive support and improvement (CSI) or targeted support and improvement (TSI), which often results in funding increases.

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While the DeSSA and DSSF are used as evaluative systems within the state, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) serves a similar function on a national scale.

Ongoing Debate on Measuring Student Success

Ongoing debate surrounds the best ways to measure student success. Test scores have long been a part of the American education system and have become a convenient way for educators to communicate student progress. The system largely revolves around a proficiency binary, with those deemed proficient also deemed successful. This metric is simple to convey to parents and other interested parties, as it solely involves meeting a threshold or falling below it rather than weighing multiple, qualitative factors to first define what success is and then whether a child is reaching expectations. However, those who favor incorporating more qualitative measures into student achievement acknowledge that the task is not simple; instead, they value the measures’ intricacies as a more comprehensive way of acknowledging nuances that influence schools and students. Academicians, educators, school administrators, policymakers, parents, and the public all hold varied opinions about what is best for children based on their own observations, beliefs, and roles within a child’s educational journey.

Still, regardless of where individuals stand on divisive topics like using test scores to measure student and school success, experts recommend abiding by certain guiding principles in all situations. First, and most importantly, discussions on student success should be framed by relevant empirical evidence. Data serve as a starting point to have informed conversations and, eventually, to make informed decisions on educational policy. Moreover, experts recommend that individuals familiarize themselves with the basics of data and statistics to better understand a measure’s own inherent strengths and weaknesses. Depending on the context in which they are used, some measures’ predictive validity could appear stronger than others.

Impact of Social Determinants of Health

The pandemic resulted in a considerable amount of lost learning, the true extent of which is only now becoming apparent. Social determinants of health (SDOH) are “nonmedical factors that influence health outcomes,” and are organized into five key categories: health care access and quality, neighborhood and built environment, social and community context, economic stability, and education access and quality. They are impacted by larger forces and systems such as socioeconomic status, geographic location, political structures, and social norms, creating a wide network of interconnected and often bidirectional influences.

Chronic Absenteeism as a Barrier

More than one-fourth (27%) of Delaware’s children were chronically absent in the 2021 to 2022 school year. A student is considered chronically absent when not present for 10% or more of school days, though many school districts throughout the state do not distinguish between chronic absence and truancy despite the important differences that exist between these two situations. Chronic absence encompasses absences for any reason - both excused and unexcused - such as chronic illness, lack of reliable transportation to school, housing insecurity, and student disengagement. Research has found that attendance is often a stronger predictor of academic success than test scores.

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Online learning was a necessary adaptation that schools made during the peak of the public health emergency, but in-person attendance has not yet caught up with pre-pandemic levels. Some question if the pandemic has permanently altered the way that children and their families view education, now thinking of school as an obligation that can be completed distantly, or even as a non-obligation altogether. However, the importance of in-person instruction should not be understated. Yet not all missed instruction time is because a child does not want to physically be in school - often, children face barriers to attending school that are out of their control and even their parents’ control. For example, chronic and mental illnesses, unsafe commutes to school, bullying, poverty, and homelessness are a few of many reasons a child may be chronically absent. Each issue is challenging to address, but homelessness presents unique hardships that are deeply intertwined with attendance. Homeless children are more likely to be chronically absent from school, as well as to move schools and have lower academic achievement than securely housed children. Absences can often be attributed in part to an unhoused child’s lack of necessities like access to nutritious food, clean clothing, school supplies, and reliable transportation.

Nutrition and Academic Performance

A balanced diet is essential for children's brain development and peak academic performance. Attending school hungry or undernourished interferes with children’s ability to learn, negatively impacting their cognitive functioning and causing inattention. The preoccupation that accompanies sourcing their next meal not only diverts children’s focus on learning, but also does lasting harm to their mental health and relationships with food. Research has indicated that, “moving in and out of food security as well as experiencing persistent marginal food security or food insecurity contributes to adverse child development outcomes across cognitive and behavioral domains,” which poses challenges for educators. Food insecurity exists along a spectrum, and multiple loci within this range contribute to negative educational outcomes for children that must be addressed by schools and staff.

Initiatives to address children’s nutritional needs such as SNAP, WIC, and School Nutrition Programs (SNP) have been increasingly utilized during and since the pandemic, both in Delaware and nationwide. Temporary increases to SNAP benefits significantly decreased food insecurity throughout the state, but since benefits were returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2023, Delaware has seen a surge in demand at organizations like the Food Bank. This demand is largely serving Delaware’s youth, given that children under 18 are more likely to be food insecure than adults across all three of the state’s counties.

Socioeconomic Status and Its Influence

Socioeconomic status (SES) is known to be correlated with children’s academic success, and some studies have found that SES is over “three times more important than race in predicting [academic] outcomes.” Notably, a student’s success is also impacted by the economic well-being of their peers’ families. Just as children are shaped by other students’ language or behavior in their classes, “there are likely a variety of mechanisms by which peers can either negatively or positively influence individual student achievement,” including their classmates’ own socioeconomic standing. Intuitively, this finding makes sense: wealthier families are more likely to have disposable income that can be used to make investments in their communities and schools, and all children educated in well-resourced schools are more likely to fare favorably regardless of their families’ own financial standing.

But even more, school funding is structured in a way that perpetuates inequities between districts because of the disparities that persist in housing. Around 13% of Delawarean children live at or below the federal poverty level, a figure slightly lower than the national average (16%). In total, 26,000 children across the state face not only the academic challenges directly associated with attending school in under-resourced districts, but also those challenges that poverty makes more likely. Living in poverty limits access to healthcare, safe housing, and a balanced diet, each of which can affect a child’s educational success by negatively impacting their attendance, cognitive functioning, and mental health.

The Role of Support Systems

In addition to their many other responsibilities, schools are also tasked with providing resources to students that require additional assistance, such as tutoring and mental health supports. Despite individualized instruction being among the most effective educational interventions and a source of mentorship, access to tutoring services is unequal across class and racial lines. In the past, federally funded tutoring programs such as America Reads were not sustained nationally due to a “lack of central funding, data collection, guidance, and structure,” and those that did succeed were able to do so because of exceptional leadership and/or local funding.

Public schools also provide safe spaces for children to seek mental health support or confide in trusted adults. When children are mentally well and cared for, school climate improves alongside individual outcomes. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are traumatic events experienced by children under 18 that are correlated with negative long-term outcomes. This can include experiences such as parental incarceration; witnessing intimate partner violence or violence within the community; a family member’s death by or attempted suicide; witnessing or experiencing child abuse or neglect; and living in a household with substance misuse or mental health problems, among others. In 2022, it was reported that 43% of children in Delaware experienced at least one ACE.

Addressing the Challenges and Improving Outcomes

Addressing the social determinants of health that contribute to poor educational outcomes allows Delaware to fare better on a national scale. Ensuring that children perform their best in primary school promotes future economic stability because it creates the foundation for a healthy, prosperous workforce that can be drawn upon. It is worth noting that a tension exists between prioritizing individual and structural factors among experts, but both are valuable and worthy of addressing in education reform. Peak performance starts at an individual level, with each child arriving at school on time, ready to learn, and having had enough food and sleep prior. Meeting individual students’ needs appears more manageable than confronting the complexities of contributors like chronic absenteeism, poverty, and homelessness, but approaching larger, structural issues has far-reaching impacts in domains outside of that which is the primary focus.

Children’s achievement is determined by far more than what they are taught in the classroom or how they score on a test. Emphasizing education’s role as a social determinant of health allows advocates to look deeply at the various contributors to poor academic outcomes and focus their attention on the root causes of Delaware’s shortcomings. In reducing disparities in housing, healthcare, and economic security, education outcomes can be equalized, nurturing an environment in which all children are provided the opportunity to grow and thrive regardless of their class, gender, race, ethnicity, or zip code.

Delaware's Strengths

Ranking seventh for public schools is Delaware, which ranks sixteenth for quality and third for safety. Delaware has the second-lowest bullying incident rate, only second to D.C.

Comparison with Other States

WalletHub ranked each state’s public schools for “Quality” and “Safety” using 33 relevant metrics. Metrics included high school graduation rate among low-income students, math and reading scores, median SAT and ACT scores, pupil-teach ratio, the share of armed students, the number of school shootings between 2000 and June 2020, bullying incidence rate, and more.

Here's how some other states ranked:

Massachusetts: 48.8% of Massachusetts’s eligible schools ranked in the top 25% of high school rankings, a total of 167 schools. and the second-highest median ACT score of 25.1. Massachusetts also has one of the lowest bullying incidence rates in the country and is considered one of the best states for teachers.
Connecticut ranks second in the nation for public schools, ranking second for quality and 19th for safety. Connecticut students have the highest median ACT score of 25.5 and have the third-highest reading test scores. Connecticut spends about $18,958 per student, one of the highest per-pupil costs in the country.
New Jersey has the third-best public schools in the United States. New Jersey has the second-lowest dropout rate among states and the third-lowest pupil-to-teacher ratio. Additionally, students have the third-highest math test scores and the second-highest reading test scores in the nation. New Jersey ranks second for the overall quality of schools and 11th for safety. The state spends about $21,866 per student on average.
Virginia has the fourth-best public schools overall in the United States, ranking fourth for quality and third for safety. Virginia public schools were found to have the fourth-highest math test scores in the country.
New Hampshire has the fifth-best public schools in the United States, ranking fourth for quality and twelfth for safety. New Hampshire schools have the fourth-highest reading test scores among states and the second-highest median ACT score of 25.1.
The sixth-best state for public schools is Maryland. Maryland’s average ACT score is 22.3, and its average SAT score is 1058.
At the eighth spot for states with the best public schools is Nebraska.
Vermont has the fifth-best public schools in the nation. Vermont ranks eighth for quality, having the lowest pupil-to-teacher ratio in the country, allowing teachers to give each student extra attention. is 16-to-1, while Vermont’s is 10.5-to-1.

On the opposite end, the five states with the worst public schools are New Mexico, Alaska, Louisiana, Arizona, and West Virginia.

Impact of Pandemic Relief Funds

The latest report also provides the first high resolution picture of where Delaware students’ academic recovery stood in Spring 2024, just before federal relief dollars expired in September. While the National Assessment of Educational Progress described changes in average achievement by state, we combine those scores with district scores on state assessments to describe the change in local communities throughout Delaware. Still, not a single district in Delaware has returned to its 2019 levels in either math or reading. Across the state, students remain behind by an average of over four-fifths of a grade level in math (.86 grade equivalents) after losing an initial 1.25 grade levels between 2019 and 2022. In reading, despite recovery ranking 17th in the nation between 2022-2024, students have not recovered any ground, remaining behind by over four-fifths of a grade level (.84 grade equivalents) after losing just over an additional tenth of a grade level (.11 grade equivalents) between 2022-2024. Reading is more of a concern in Delaware than math; though not a single district has recovered to 2019 levels in either subject, math scores show some recovery, while reading scores do not. Nationally, 85 percent of students are in districts below 2019 levels in math, with only 15 percent above. Delaware received $637 million in federal pandemic relief for K-12 schools-or roughly $4,600 per student (which is more than the national average of $3,700 per student). The federal pandemic relief dollars may be gone, but the pandemic’s impact lingers in many Delaware schools.

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