I hope I can help. I've taken a couple of college courses in history (one of my professors has a graduate degree).
Good: Jefferson, Jackson (Washington was good), Polk, Monroe
Bad: Quincy Adams, John Tyler (I hate James Buchanan too),
Jefferson helped unite the country after a rough election campaign in 1801. He minimized the countries debt and he bought the Louisiana Territory, nearly doubling the size of the country.
Preferrably, people view Jackson as a "good" president because he satisfied people's worries, gave the government little power, by declaring the national bank unconstitutional, and for the only time in our history, the US was debt-free. Being a decorated war hero, he gave the nation a great sense of pride and nationalism.
Personally, I think of Jackson as a crazy cook who used too much executive power. They was really nothing wrong with the Bank, and he was the main force behind the Indian Removal Act, which forced tribes to move to Oklahoma territory. Most notably, he overturned a supreme court ruling to let the Cherokee stay in Georgia, forcing them to leave at gunpoint (many cherokee died on the "trail of tears" to Oklahoma).
John Quincy Adams was a 'bad' president mostly because he was accused of corruption for 4 years. In the corrupt bargain in 1825, the deal Henry Clay gave Adams his electoral votes to Adams to give him enough to win the presidential election (Jackson won the popular vote but he didn't have a majority of the electoral). Adams never got anything approved so, you could say he was a bit of a failure, though after, he was a major speaker for the abolitionist movement.
James Buchanan is an enigma to me. Historians rank him as one of the worst presidents because he didn't stop the south from seceding (he felt congress didn't have the power to). He approved popular sovereignty in the western territories, who most likely would have wanted to become slave states.
I mention John tyler cause he took over after W. Harrison died and inherited a Whig prominent congress (Tyler was a democrat). He disapproved many of the WHigs proposals, and in his last year, he annexed Texas, which Martin Van Buren had avoided doing because it reopened the CONTROVERSIAL debate of the expansion of slavery.
John Adams may have been a bad president, mostly because he approved the Alien & Sedition Acts, arresting journalists who wrote ill of him. He was accused of using too much executive power and made enemies in his own party, he favored the aggresive trade policies of Britain, however, he did prove that the U.S could operate with a "loose" interpretation of the constitution and more power to the national government.