Well-educated parents, top-rated schools and a strong library system have all worked together to create Johnson County’s darn-near perfect children—at least as measured by scholastic standards.

The percentage of people 25 years and older with a high-school diploma or above in the county is an astounding 92.9, compared to a national average of 75.2 percent. Twice as many Johnson Countians have a bachelor’s degree as compared to the rest of the country, and almost twice as many have advanced degrees. Much of this erudition can be attributed to the ability of the county and the communities within it to attract the kind of companies that bring highly schooled workers with them. All you have to do is look at the six school districts that make up the county, though, to see that much of the intelligence is home grown.

Expansion Management Magazine, which provides data for companies looking to relocate, takes a hard look each year at over 2,200 secondary-school districts throughout the United States. The magazine has devised a complex formula for ranking school systems that takes into account—among other things—graduation rates, income levels of adults within the community, and the community’s financial commitment to education. Based on this formula, the magazine gave its highest gold rankings in 2000 to the Shawnee Mission, Blue Valley, Olathe and Gardner-Edgerton-Antioch public schools. The only reason it did not so recognize the DeSoto or Spring Hill school districts is because it did not analyze them.

Ingram’s recently conducted its own survey, however, and found DeSoto and Spring Hill both had exceptionally high graduation rates with test scores well above the norm. As the county continues to grow south and west, these school districts will expand and become increasingly important to the education of the population.

Also crucial to a well-educated population are strong libraries, and the county is a star in that regard as well. The Johnson County Library system has been rated as the second-best library system in the nation among libraries serving communities with populations between 250,000 and 500,000, according to Hennen’s American Public Library Rating Index. The system serves an area of 366,200 people with 12 branches and a central resource library.

If the importance of education is passed from one generation to the next, scholastic achievement in Johnson County will continue to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.