Is the District the most well-read city in the United States? Central Connecticut State University says so: their annual rankings of America’s Most Literate Cities ranks Washington, DC at the top of the list.

The District usually scores pretty well in the yearly rankings — last year, we finished second behind Seattle, who had topped the list in four of the previous five years. The study determines the rankings by using six metrics — newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and Internet resources. Washington finished 17th in bookstores, seventh in education, 15th in libraries, and at the top of the list in newspaper and periodical circulation and internet resources. Pat yourselves on the back, commentariat!

Although we’d hate to ruin the little celebration you’re no doubt performing at your desk right now, it’s important to note — as we did last year — that the CCSU study is inherently skewed against low-income areas, where bookstores are rare and access to the Internet isn’t quite as universal as more affluent sections of town. Also, Washington’s “education” ranking is grossly ignorant of the struggles that District educators have at teaching reading at the elementary level and middle school levels — the ranking is based on the percentage of the city with a high school diploma or higher, which, in a city of transplants, will always be an inflated figure.