Discussion

Introduction

The purpose of this publication is to provide basic descriptive information about the 100 largest school districts (ranked by student membership) in the United States (50 states and the District of Columbia) and other jurisdictions (Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of Defense schools, and five outlying areas: American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Marianas, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands) for the 2002–03 school year. In this report, the term “United States and jurisdictions” refers to these entities. This is different from most National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports, which include only the 50 states and the District of Columbia in the totals.

Almost one in four public school students in the United States and jurisdictions is served by one of the 100 largest school districts (table A). These districts are distinguished from all school districts by characteristics other than the size of their membership, such as average school size, median pupil/teacher ratio, and minority enrollment as a proportion of total enrollment (tables A and B).

In this report, the terms “public school districts,” “school districts,” and “regular schools districts” are used interchangeably. These districts are a subset of local education agencies (LEAs), which include regular school districts; local supervisory unions that provide management services for a group of associated school districts; regional education service agencies that typically provide school districts with research, testing, and data processing services; state and federally operated school districts; and other agencies that do not fall into these groupings (e.g., charter schools reported as their own agencies). A “regular school district” is an agency responsible for providing free public education for school-age children residing within its jurisdiction. All of the 100 largest districts are regular school districts.

Information about the characteristics listed above is found in the tables that accompany this report. To establish a meaningful context for the information on the 100 largest districts, 4 text tables (tables A-D) provide national data and data for the 100 largest school districts; tables A and B also include data for the 500 largest districts. Appendix A lists the 500 largest school districts with some identifying information. Appendix B is an alphabetical list of the 500 largest districts that includes their rank by membership size. Appendix C provides a count of the number of 100 largest districts by state for the states in which they reside. Appendix D provides selected data for the 100 largest school districts in the 1992–93 school year for comparison with the 2002–03 school year. In all tables and appendixes, with the exception of appendixes B and C, districts are presented in decreasing order of membership size.