COLUMBIA, MD — A new report has ranked the best school district in Maryland, and the answer may not not come as a surprise. The website 24/7 Wall St., a Delaware corporation that publishes financial news and commentary, sifted through various school data to determine the best school district in every state.

In Maryland, the Howard County Public Schools topped the list. The district has 53,685 students and spends $15,714 per student, the analysis found. The high school graduation rate is 92.5 percent and 61 percent of adults have a bachelor's degree. The company evaluated the districts by creating an index based on data in the following categories:

Child poverty

Spending per student

Graduation rate

Teachers per student

Percentage of adults with a bachelor's degree

Preschool enrollment

Advanced Placement enrollment Several school districts in the U.S. spend more than $50,000 per student on education each year, 24/7 Wall St. said, but others spend less than $2,000 per student. "That difference in spending contributes to major disparities in student outcomes throughout the country," the authors wrote. "The majority of a school's budget is spent on staff and teacher salaries. A school that is able to attract the best teachers can give their students a major advantage."

Indeed, wealthier areas often reap those rewards. (For more news like this, find your local Patch here. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app; download the free Patch Android app here.) Local sources, including property taxes, account for about 44 percent of all school funding in the U.S. This means most of the best school districts are located in affluent counties where the majority of households earn more than double that of a typical American household.

But in Howard County, the median household income from 2012-2016 was $113,800, roughly double the national average of $55,322. Furthermore, the poverty rate in the county was 5.2 percent, much lower than the national average of 12.7 percent.

The nationwide rankings report published on Monday follows a January report from the same site that found Maryland overall ranked sixth in the country for best schools.