America's best public schools RANKED: The 20 secret suburbs YOU need to move to for a great taxpayer-funded education

Getting their kids into a top-notch public school is a goal for many parents.

Decent public schools can save families thousands of dollars each year, and put youngsters on track for a successful college and work careers.

Niche, a comparison website, has crunched the data and says they should consider Scarsdale, a wealthy suburb of New York City.

The Westchester County town of some 18,000 people gets an A+ rating for schools, which it scores as the best in the nation.

The best public schools are found in the suburbs around New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Austin, Boston, San Diego, and San Francisco

Scarsdale, in Westchester County, north of New York City, has some of the best public schools  

Many residents move to Westchester to save on the costs of sending their children to costly private schools.

Still, they end up paying in other ways.

House prices average at $1.6 million — six times the national average — and taxes are relatively high.

The next two suburbs with great schools are around Austin, Texas.

West Lake Hills and Rollingwood, both to the west of Austin, have some of the nation's best-ranked public schools.

A pair of Chicago suburbs — Long Grove and Lincolnshire — round out the top five.

Parents are especially keen to get their children a good education because reading and writing skills have dropped in recent years.

The math and reading test scores for 13-year-olds plummeted in the pandemic, when lockdowns shuttered classrooms and children had to study online from their kitchen tables.

Average reading scores fell four points between the 2019-2020 and 2022-23 school years, and math scores by a staggering nine points, reaching levels not seen since the 1970s.

Westlake High School campus in one of the affluent suburbs to the west of Austin

Adlai E Stevenson High School in one of the wealthy neighborhoods north of Chicago 

Against this backdrop, Luke Skurman, CEO and founder of Niche, said school quality was an important factor for where parents decided to settle down.

'We know that people consider far more than just affordability when deciding where to call home,' said Skurman.

They looked at everything from 'neighborhood diversity and weather conditions to career opportunities and the quality of the schools.'

His researchers found that the countries best public schools were all suburbs of seven major cities.

They are New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Austin, Boston, San Diego, and San Francisco.

As well as Scarsdale, New Yorkers can opt for Woodbury, Syosset, or Roosevelt, which is nearby in New Jersey's Monmouth County.

Niche uses public data from the Department of Education, the US Census Bureau, the National Center for Education Statistics and other sources.