About — State Education Audit

Most parents will visit their state education agency's website at some point — to look up a school's report card, find graduation requirements, check on a teacher's certification, or understand a new policy. Most educators will visit even more often. These sites are public infrastructure. When they're broken, every parent and every teacher in the state pays the price.

The State Education Audit is a daily review project: one state per day, evaluated against a research-backed rubric derived from federal digital-service standards, WCAG 2.1 accessibility guidance, and education-technology best-practice studies published 2023–2025. The rubric and weights were fixed before the first review and apply equally to every state.

What's in a review

A guided tour of the site's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
A standout feature worth highlighting nationally
A score on each of the nine rubric criteria, with a transparent grade breakdown
Annotated screenshots of representative pages

What it's not

This is not a ranking of state education systems, not a measure of student outcomes, and not an audit of state agency performance. It's a usability review of a single, public-facing artifact: the website. A great site won't fix a struggling system, but a broken site does measurably get in the way of families who need to find information they're entitled to.

Methodology and scoring

Every state is evaluated against the same nine weighted criteria. See the methodology page for the rubric, weights, and scoring guide.

How to get in touch

Found an error in a review? See something that should be celebrated? Run a state agency and want to talk about findings? If you work at a state education agency and want to go deeper, I'll provide — at no cost — a more detailed UX and cybersecurity analysis of your site, with a prioritized list of concrete suggestions your team can act on. No sales pitch, no follow-up. Just email brianphilpot@gmail.com.