A lot of people also don't realize that, even though schools in states like Alabama and Louisiana on average perform poorly on primary education metrics compare

A lot of people also don't realize that, even though schools in states like Alabama and Louisiana on average perform poorly on primary education metrics compared to other states, each one of the states almost definitely has at least one absolutely great high school that is extremely competitive on a national level in academics. For example, look at LAMP High School[0] or Mountain Brook[1] in Alabama. One is listed as the 17th top school in the US, the other produced 3 Rhodes scholars. Both consistently rank very high on the lists of top schools in the US. And there are quite a few other pretty academically great schools in that state, just ranked a bit lower (but still as some of the best schools in the country). 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP_High_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP_High_School 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Brook_High_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Brook_High_School