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ElwoodBlues Education
The quality of a community’s schools can be central to a family’s aspirations. And though public education has largely been a local matter for school boards and states that allocate most of schools’ funding, the federal government has played a large role for the past several decades. The No Child Left Behind Act, for example, put in place annual testing requirements for states, while the Every Student Succeeds Act enshrined the annual testing requirement but rolled back the federal government’s involvement in K-12 education. Its role may be scaled back further in the near future.
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Rankings: Education
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Florida
#2 in Education
#6 in Best States Overall
Florida attained statehood in 1845, yet not until a pair of railroad barons built lines down the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in the late 1800s and early 1900s did the state take off, spurring the phenomenal growth of what’s now the third-most populous state.
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Henry Flagler arrived aboard the first train to Key West, the southernmost point of the U.S., in 1912, marking completion of his Florida East Coast Railway linking the East Coast from north to south. In his path, he left grand hotels – the Hotel Ponce de Leon in St. Augustine, and the Breakers and Royal Poinciana in what became known as Palm Beach. Another Henry – businessman and steamship owner Henry Plant – pushed rail lines down Florida’s West Coast.
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With millions of visitors each year to its beaches, major amusement parks centered around Orlando and cruise ships departing from ports on both coasts, tourism is a major contributor to Florida's gross domestic product. The state’s agriculture industry is also robust, with Florida groves producing many of the country’s oranges and a winter vegetable industry that makes agriculture a year-round enterprise.
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Tourism, which pays a sizable share of the state’s sales tax, also has enabled Florida to remain among the states without a personal income tax – adding to the allure of the nation’s leading retirement haven.
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The state has 1,350 miles of coastline and a land mass of 53,630 square miles. It’s 792 miles by land from Pensacola in the far northwestern Panhandle to Key West at the end of the archipelago that stretches south of Miami, and along the way there is no natural elevation higher than 345 feet – on a ridge of the Panhandle. No state has a lower peak.
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With several large cities, the state also has a sizable system of state universities and community colleges. The University of Florida in Gainesville and Florida State University in Tallahassee have been rivaled in enrollment by the University of South Florida in Tampa, University of Central Florida in Orlando, and Florida International University in Miami. Among the best known private institutions is University of Miami.
#22
Pre-K-12
#1
Higher Education
