Wake and Mecklenburg County Schools Make Forbes
Top Ten List
The Associated Press
February 23, 2004

The public school systems in Wake and Mecklenburg counties were ranked among the ten best big-city systems in a Forbes Magazine survey.

The two are the only ones from the same state on the magazine's ranking of the best education in the biggest cities.

Wake County's schools ranked third, behind Boston and Salt Lake City. Mecklenburg County ranked ninth, just above San Diego in the list published in Forbes' Feb. 13 edition.

Forbes said criteria for ranking included high school graduation rates, housing affordability, and the best access to educational resources such as libraries, colleges, and museums. The magazine analyzed the 100 largest school districts in the most populous cities in the U.S. as determined by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Baltimore, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Austin also made the ten-best list.

Boston and San Diego, which bookended the list, had the highest housing prices, but Boston had a significantly higher graduation rate -- 82 percent to San Diego's 62 percent.

At $180,900 and $161,600 respectively, Wake County and Mecklenburg counties have significantly lower median housing prices than No. 1 Boston's $432,700. The counties' educational bang-for-the-buck, Forbes said, helped both make the list.