BOSTON - Have you heard of Massachusetts? We're wicked smaht. At least that is according to a new report released today which ranked Massachusetts as the most educated state in the country. But what do they mean, 'most educated'? Is it just who has the most college graduates? We took a deep dive to look at what makes us so smaht.

First, some fun rankings. As far as the highest percent of Bachelor's Degree holders, Massachusetts is #1. How about the highest percentage of graduate or professional degree holders? Yes, Massachusetts is #1. Highest average university quality? Okay, we're not #1. But we're #2!

Back to the report. They basically used two key dimensions: educational attainment and quality of education.

Attainment is fairly straightforward. How many educational degrees does the average person have? Now, you can argue whether having a degree makes someone 'smart', but we were not rated the smartest state, we were rated the most educated.

But then, there is the quality of education. Even if you have a degree, it doesn't mean it's a high-quality degree. This took a look at the overall quality of our school system. It also looked at how many Blue Ribbon schools Massachusetts has per capita (Blue Ribbon is an award handed out by the Department of Education to schools of a certain caliber which work on closing the achievement gap). They also looked at test scores, average rankings of colleges and universities, high school graduation rates, how large the gender and racial gaps in education are, and even more.

Suffice to say, this decision was not made lightly. Amazingly, out of every state in America which was ranked in those two dimensions, we came out #1 in both. The number two overall was Maryland, followed by Colorado in third, Vermont in fourth, and rounding out the top five was Connecticut.

Congratulations to all states which are committed to providing quality education to all of their citizens no matter their race, gender, or ethnicity. Here's hoping we're #1 in 2021!

Image via Wikimedia Commons