RALEIGH -- Over the past two years, North Carolina has improved 18-spots in Wallet Hub's rankings of the quality of education in all 50 states, breaking through to the top-20 best schools in the country.

In 2014, Wallet Hub ranked North Carolina schools 37 out of 50 states plus the District of Columbia. But in newly released rankings for 2016, North Carolina improved to No. 19.

"Improving education and teacher pay have been our top priorities since day one," said Governor  Pat McCrory in a press release. "Strategic investments in raising teacher pay, textbooks, digital learning resources and reading coaches have improved our state's overall education ranking and helped contribute to our state's best high school graduation rate in history."

WalletHub’s analysts compared the quality of education in the 50 states and the District of Columbia to shine the spotlight on top-performing school systems. In making such a comparison, we examined each state and the District across 17 key metrics, ranging from “student-teacher ratio” to “average SAT and ACT scores” to “dropout rate.”

The study's methodology can be found at:

https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-best-schools/5335/