Defending Education’s 2026 Rankings on Integrity in State Education (RISE) puts Tennessee first overall, Illinois 50th and Washington, D.C., 51st. But the published overall list does not establish that red states rank higher than blue states on parental rights or diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI): those are two of five categories in the ranking, and the accessible results do not show category-level scores or ranks.
What the 2026 RISE ranking says
Defending Education published its RISE ranking on October 1, 2026. The organization says it compares all 50 states and the District of Columbia across five education-policy categories: gender and sexuality, DEI, parental rights, teacher policies and foreign influence. Its published overall order begins:
- Tennessee
- Alabama
- Florida and North Carolina, tied
- Iowa, in fifth place
At the bottom, Illinois is ranked 50th and the District of Columbia 51st. These are overall ordinal positions reported by Defending Education, not scores for any single category. Read the RISE report and state rankings.
Does this prove red states rank higher on parental rights and DEI?
No—not from the published overall order available here. The Center Square article’s headline makes a red-state/blue-state claim about parental rights and DEI, but the accessible RISE page identifies those categories without providing their state-by-state scores or ranks. A state’s overall place cannot establish its place in either category, and political labels cannot fill in missing results. The claim should be treated as the article’s framing, not as a conclusion independently demonstrated by the available rankings. The Center Square article republished by Frankfort Local.
#1 Best Overall
What the ranking measures—and what it does not establish
Defending Education describes RISE as a comparison of how state governments handle the listed education-policy issues. Its website says the organization works to keep political ideology and activism out of schools, and the RISE page presents the ranking as information for parents considering how states handle education issues. That perspective is useful context when interpreting the organization’s categories and judgments. Defending Education’s description of its mission.
The accessible report page does not specify the indicators, evidence-coding rules, weighting, scoring scale, tie procedure or independent validation needed to reconstruct the ranking. Nor does the overall order include a named student-outcome measure or confidence interval. It therefore supports a statement about Defending Education’s published ranking, not a claim that top-ranked states have better student achievement, school quality or educational outcomes.
Rank #2
What a fair state-by-state comparison would require
To evaluate the headline’s political comparison, readers would need the report’s category-level results and methodology—not just the overall list. A meaningful comparison would check:
- Each state’s scores or ranks for parental rights and DEI, reported separately.
- The definitions and indicators used for each category, along with the evidence dates.
- The scoring scale, category weights and how ties are handled.
- How states are classified politically and whether the comparison accounts for differences beyond party labels.
Without those details, the overall positions can be reported accurately, but they cannot verify the claim that red states do better on the two named categories.
Rank #3
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How to read the attributed remarks
The Center Square article quotes Defending Education director of government affairs Dr. Terry Stoops saying, “If your state is at the top of Defending Education’s rankings, congratulations! You live in a state with public school policies that prioritize sound academics over shameless antics.” That is Stoops’s advocacy and opinion; the overall RISE rank does not itself demonstrate that a state prioritizes academics or has better outcomes.
The same article quotes Defending Education senior director of strategic initiatives Paul Runko: “Parents can only make the best education decisions for their children when they have transparent information.” The quote expresses a case for transparency; it does not supply the missing category scores or methodology.
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