With Summer quickly fading into the rearview mirror, schools across the country are starting up again. For parents and homeowners, school quality is almost always at the top of the priority list. As Millennials and young families jump into the housing markets, school rating and review sites become (almost) as important to buyers as credit scores and mortgage interest rates. But while checking out a “best schools” list will give you today’s top schools, how can you find tomorrow’s best of the best?  With that in mind, real estate data/analytics firm Trulia partnered with SchoolDigger.com to find the top “up-and-coming” school districts in the nation by looking at the past five years to see what schools have improved their state test scores.

At the top of the list is NYC Geographic District 15 in the New York City borough of Brooklyn.  If you can afford the median price ($1.588 million), know that the school district has nearly tripled test scores since 2011. The top 10 list also includes the following districts:

NYC Geographic District 15 (New York City) – median price: $1.588 million Community High School District 218 (Chicago) – median price: $176,551 Jordan Public School District (Minneapolis) – median price: $264,900 Ninos Charter School (Houston) – median price: $399,900 Mansfield Independent School District (Dallas) – median price: $178,000 Phoenix Elementary District (Phoenix) – median price: $228,820 Acton-Agua Dulce Unified (Los Angeles) – median price: $519,216 Victor Valley Union High (Riverside, CA) – median price: $211,634 Social Circle City (Atlanta) – median price: $216,438 Culpeper County Public Schools (Washington, DC) – median price: 301,630

What is particularly helpful about a list like this is that it should encourage prospective homebuyers and young families that some of the nation’s (future) top schools are located in very affordable areas, including Riverside, Atlanta, Dallas Chicago.  The article also includes a handy sortable database that provides even more comprehensive information (enrollment, number of schools, relative rankings, and more) about 2,775 districts in the largest 100 metros in the nation.

To read more about this recent study, check out 'Back to (Better) Schools: Most Improved School Districts in the U.S. Biggest Cities' by Trulia.