The unfortunate fact of the matter is that some places in the Grand Canyon State have a larger percent of their population that never graduated from high school.
While the emphasis on going to college might be overblown, the fact is that not graduating from high school puts you at a significant disadvantage on average. Educational attainment might not be the best way to measure one person’s intelligence, but it does shine a light on the state.
We will use Saturday Night Science to determine what places in Arizona have the highest percentage of adults without a high school degree.
A recent study we published found that Arizona is actually the 37th smartest state in the United States, with an average IQ of 98.
But that doesn’t mean that a few cities in Arizona are a bit slower than others due to a lack of basic education.
After crunching the numbers, we ranked the ten dumbest cities in the Grand Canyon State.
Don’t freak out.
Some places are just smarter than others, but that says nothing about the character of the people living there. It’s another data point a real estate agent would never tell you.
For this ranking, we only looked at cities with populations greater than 5,000, leaving us 52 cities in Arizona to rank. You can take a look at the data below.
For more Arizona reading, check out:
Table Of Contents: Top Ten | Methodology | Summary | Table
The 10 Dumbest Places In Arizona For 2023
/10
% Adult High School Dropout: 49.0%
% Highly Educated: 7.0%
More on San Luis: Cost Of Living | Crime Report
/10
% Adult High School Dropout: 34.0%
% Highly Educated: 9.0%
More on Guadalupe: Cost Of Living
/10
% Adult High School Dropout: 32.0%
% Highly Educated: 8.0%
More on Tolleson: Cost Of Living | Crime Report
/10
% Adult High School Dropout: 28.0%
% Highly Educated: 8.0%
More on Eloy: Cost Of Living | Crime Report
/10
% Adult High School Dropout: 18.0%
% Highly Educated: 8.0%
More on Winslow: Cost Of Living | Crime Report
/10
% Adult High School Dropout: 33.0%
% Highly Educated: 16.0%
More on Somerton: Cost Of Living | Crime Report
/10
% Adult High School Dropout: 26.0%
% Highly Educated: 12.0%
More on Florence: Cost Of Living | Crime Report
/10
% Adult High School Dropout: 25.0%
% Highly Educated: 12.0%
More on Douglas: Cost Of Living | Crime Report
/10
% Adult High School Dropout: 33.0%
% Highly Educated: 17.0%
More on Nogales: Cost Of Living | Crime Report
/10
% Adult High School Dropout: 20.0%
% Highly Educated: 16.0%
More on El Mirage: Cost Of Living | Crime Report
Methodology: How we determined the dumbest cities in the Grand Canyon State
We realize that formal education is only part of it when it comes to being intelligent, but on the other hand, knowing the difference between they’re, their, and there is always going to make you look pretty stupid.
So, we narrowed down our criteria to focus on a city’s educational opportunities and what percentage of the population takes advantage of those opportunities.
In short, we came up with these criteria to determine the dumbest cities in Arizona:
- % of the city’s population with less than a high school education (Age 25+)
- % of city’s population with a college degree (Age 25+)
We got the data from the U.S. Census 2017-2021 American Community Survey.
Then, our algorithm generates a rank for each place in these categories. After crunching all the numbers, a ranking of the cities in Arizona from dumbest to brightest.
For this ranking, we used every Arizona city with at least 5,000 residents. We updated this article for 2023, and it’s our tenth time ranking the dumbest cities in Arizona.
There You Have It – Now That You’re Asleep
If you’re measuring the locations in Arizona where there are a high number of dropouts and adults who never received a formal education, this is an accurate ranking.
If you’re also curious enough, here are the smartest places in Arizona, according to science:
- Oro Valley
- Paradise Valley
- Scottsdale
For more Arizona reading, check out:
- Best Places To Live In Arizona
- Cheapest Places To Live In Arizona
- Most Dangerous Cities In Arizona
- Richest Cities In Arizona
- Safest Places In Arizona
- Worst Places To Live In Arizona
- Most Expensive Places To Live In Arizona
I didn’t see my beloved Casa Grande. Obviously, we must hopefully rank as one of the smarter cities. Where do we rank overall?
Michael, Casa Grande is number 30 on the list. Hope you have a fantastic Monday morning
You should put kingman number one in the dumb column
Where’s the Macy’s in Nogales? Oh right, there isn’t one. This article sucks.
Guess Miami is too stupid to even be put on the list, ah what the hell, it’s a ghost town anyway.
Your misuse of statistics to rate communities as dumb or dumber is both reprehensible and dishonest. For example if all of the residents of every community had diploma rates of 91 to 92% and dropout rates of 0% to .1% you would still give the cities a judgemental rating of dumb to dumbest based on the cold hard math when in fact they could conceivably be the smartest places anywhere to live.
Also some of those towns are pretty small and “might” have a senior class average size of 5 for the last century. Then one year a student dropped out because he contacted the dengue plague and was unable to continue. The next year he came back to school and graduated 1st in his class. Yet, due to the small sample size, on the year he dropped out the dropout rate went to 20%. One outlier and your judgemental rating as dumb to some power of x suddenly increases more than exponentially. Worse, it will take several centuries of perfect dropout rates to reduce the average rate to a really low rate again that will still be much larger than the previous rate. How much bigger is .01% than 0%. It is incalculably larger. You should not be publishing any results of you deductions because you are not smart enough to detect outliers and other phenomena that must be accounted for. Now I admit that I’m being a bit harsh in saying so since the above analysis was in fact a fictional example created to illustrate the weakness of your judgements by not identifying and disclosing data outliers and other factors that would “color” your judgements. Back to statistics 101 with you.
Also, your initial premises is shaky by asserting an unsupported opinion that the only way to measure the value of a place is by measuring the intellectual accomplishments of its denizens. But it takes more than academic achievement nto build a society. It takes brick makers and layers, stone masons, pottery makers,farmers and fig prickers to name a few.You get the idea. Without these trades we’d each have to do these things for ourselves. Whether a singer of songs or a maker of thongs we all work together to build our societies and each persons contribution is important because without it we’d each have to do whatever it is for ourselves or do without..
Your response in defense of Arizona’s smaller towns is spot on and I agree. Thank you.
You should do a survey on which cities in Arizona have people of the best character and what percentage .
Man if Flagstaff ain’t the dumbest city in Arizona, I would hate to see the others. When I say dumb, I dont mean by school education
This only proves what people had in past, but not what achieved. My father, for instance, didn’t have a highschool education. However, he owned a motel, a hotel, and 3 gas stations. Obviously, all his 4 kids went to college and with brand new cars for all us kids!! Plus, we’re all successful too because of his drive, not his education.