Mobile County Public School System officials are exhorting the opportunities students get in MCPSS, after U.S. News and World Report criticized schools in Mobile as part of its ranking on the annual “Best Places to Live in the U.S.”

“We have all of these programs and opportunities that just don’t show up in the numbers,” Rena Philips, a spokesperson for MCPSS, said.

U.S. News and World Report ranked Mobile 115th out of 150 cities that it surveyed, a 15-spot jump from last year but still well behind the other major cities in Alabama. The rankings came down particularly hard on schools in Mobile: ranking them at just a 3.7/10 in terms of “college readiness.”

U.S. News is not the first to criticize MCPSS. On the most recent list of “failing schools,” schools in the state that are in the bottom 6% of schools, as measured by the percentage of students considered proficient on standardized tests. Eight schools from MCPSS made the “failing schools” list, one more than when the list was last published, in 2019.

Montgomery, which ranked 94th on the “best places to live” list, scored a 4.8/10 on U.S. News’ “college readiness” index. Montgomery County had the largest number of schools on the “failing schools” list, at 14.