A Republican ad attacking Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson in Maine says under his “failed leadership” the state’s high schools “dropped to dead last” in the country, according to annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report. But that’s not the whole story.
A major reason Maine fell to last in those state rankings is because it stopped giving U.S. News access to Advanced Placement performance data for Maine high schools — a key part of the methodology the media organization uses to rate the schools.
It’s unclear why the Maine Department of Education declined to grant access to the statistics, and a spokesperson has not responded to our request for comment. But, like Maine, other states that have not authorized U.S. News to use their high schools’ AP enrollment and exam data have fallen to the bottom of the rankings.
The ad blaming Maine’s descent on Jackson, a former state Senate president and majority leader, is from Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ campaign, and it has aired on broadcast and digital platforms since Aug. 17, according to AdImpact. Jackson is challenging Collins for her U.S. Senate seat in the toss-up race.
“Maine schools used to be among the best, but under Troy Jackson’s failed leadership in Augusta, our high schools dropped to dead last,” the ad’s narrator says, while a citation for U.S. News’ 2025-2026 state rankings appears on screen.
The Collins campaign confirmed to us that was the source for the claim.
Last year, Maine did place last out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on the review of its high schools. The state came in 51st again in the rankings for 2026-2027, which were published Aug. 17.
But the ad doesn’t mention a major reason for Maine’s consecutive last-place finishes. That is, the Maine Department of Education did not authorize U.S. News to have access to College Board data showing how Maine high school students performed on the AP exams for the college-level classes they completed. (The College Board is the nonprofit organization that runs the national AP program and administers the tests.)
In fact, Maine has now been last or next to last each year since the 2020-2021 rankings, when it first denied U.S. News access to its AP data. In 2019, the last time it permitted U.S. News to use its AP data, Maine placed 11th.
Maine was 1st in the U.S. News state rankings for high schools in 2014, and it was regularly in the Top 10 through 2018. But the methodology for rating states and high schools was different at the time.
Jackson was the state Senate majority leader from July 2013 to December 2014, and president of the state Senate from 2019 to 2024.
Since 2019, U.S. News has ranked all the states and D.C. based on the proportion of their schools that make it into the top 25% of high schools as determined by the media company. “That level of achievement is a valid indicator of the relative performance of a state’s high schools compared with other states,” U.S. News said in a post about this year’s rankings.
The high schools, meanwhile, are ranked based on six criteria, including “college readiness,” which accounts for 30% of a school’s score, and “college curriculum breadth,” which makes up another 10%. Participation in, and performance on, AP exams, as well as International Baccalaureate, or IB, exams, is a key factor in both categories.
Not having that exam information affects a school’s ranking.
“As with the 2026-2027 edition of Best High Schools, the Maine state education department declined to provide AP data for the 2025-2026 edition, which explains why Maine had the lowest proportion of schools placing in the top 25% last year,” a U.S. News spokesperson told us in an email.
The spokesperson said not allowing the use of the AP figures does not guarantee that a state will rank last, as the methodology “includes adjustments so that schools without AP or IB exam test-takers do not score significantly worse than those with very few test-takers.” But it does make it much more difficult for states to have high schools with higher rankings.
“While the adjustment prevents non-AP schools from automatically landing at the absolute bottom of national rankings, rising into the top 25% of high schools nationally without any AP/IB data is extremely challenging,” the spokesperson said.
And the reality is states that do not permit U.S. News to use the AP data often fall to the bottom of the standings.
For the 2025-2026 rankings, Maine was the only state not to allow the College Board to provide its AP data and it ended up last overall, with just four, or 3.6%, of its high schools ranking in the top 25%.
In the 2026-2027 rankings, Maine was joined at the low end of the rankings by Vermont (48th), Colorado (49th) and New York (50th). Those three states also declined to allow U.S. News to access their AP exam scores this time and their rankings suffered.
The previous year, when they allowed their AP data to be included in the calculations, New York placed 9th, Colorado was 10th and Vermont was 21st on the list.
The Jackson campaign pushed back on the ad’s claim.
“The ad blames Jackson for the U.S. News ranking of Maine’s public high schools. The truth is Maine ranked lowest in U.S. News’ 2025 report because the state did not give U.S. News permission to use its data,” a campaign spokesperson told us.
We asked U.S. News why Maine stopped granting access to the AP data, and the spokesperson directed us to the state Department of Education, which has not responded with an explanation.
The Collins campaign told us that lack of cooperation is telling.
“Maine’s lack of willingness to be transparent with its standardized testing demonstrates just how terrible the state of education has gotten under Troy Jackson’s leadership in Augusta — according to U.S. News, 51st place out of 51,” Blake Kernen, communications director for the Collins campaign, said in a statement. “The metrics that are available, including NAEP scores, depict a dire situation that has gotten drastically worse in recent years,” she said, referring to the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the Nation’s Report Card. (NAEP is administered by the U.S. Department of Education.)
In 2024, the most recent data available, Maine’s 4th and 8th grade students, although not last in the nation, had some of their worst NAEP scores in math and reading in about two decades. That year, Maine’s 4th grade average math score ranked below 39 other states and its 4th grade average reading score was below that of 40 other states. Maine’s 8th grade average math score was below 25 states and its 8th average grade reading score was below 30 states.
“Even the Biden Administration recognized how Augusta leaders were failing Maine’s students when it penalized the state in 2023 for violating the federal law that helps schools with high numbers of students from low income families — which is the vast majority of Maine schools,” Kernen said about a financial penalty the federal Department of Education gave Maine for not meeting required academic achievement standards. “As the second highest ranking official in the State of Maine, Troy had the power to do something about this alarming trend — but under his leadership, it’s only gotten worse.”
While the decline in the math and reading scores of Maine’s elementary and middle school students may be cause for concern, the Collins campaign ad specifically mentions the performance of the state’s high schools, and cites Maine’s ranking by U.S. News in particular.
That ranking is questionable since it is affected by the absent AP data.
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