Chatter on social media started up several days ago from several Kentucky educators about a LEX18.com news report that Kentucky’s education system had been ranked by a group called WalletHub as the 5th best in the nation.

Based on the tweets starting on July 28th linking to the LEX18 article, I initially thought the WalletHub report was for 2017, but I could not find it online on July 28th.Things got more confused when WalletHub actually issued its 2017 report just a few days later on July 31. The 2017 report indicated Kentucky only ranked 27th. So, I called LEX18 to find out what was going on. The person I contacted there was not able to explain the difference between the figures for Kentucky in the LEX18 report and the 2017 WalletHub report.

Yesterday I determined that LEX18.com’s article was from July 28, 2015 and apparently covered another WalletHub report from two years ago.

In any event, WalletHub’s 2017 report does not rank Kentucky in 5th place. We are listed in the 27th slot for our total score. That is quite a drop from 5th place just two years ago although it must be considered that WalletHub uses more metrics in its 2017 report.

By the way, despite the previous mystery, one solid outcome from all of this is there clearly are no problems with the security of WalletHub’s e-mails. So, that issue can be put to bed.