• Introduction
• Overview of the 100 Largest Districts
• Where Are the 100 Largest School Districts?
• How Do These Districts Compare With the Average School District?
• References

This publication provides basic descriptive information about the 100 largest school districts (ranked by student membership) in the United States and 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). When discussing characteristics, the term "United States and jurisdictions" is used to refer to all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of Defense schools, and five outlying areas. This is different from most National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports, which include only the 50 states and the District of Columbia in national totals.

Almost one in every four public school students in this nation is served by one of these 100 districts (table A). They are distinguished from the average school district by characteristics in addition to sheer size of membership, such as average and median school size, pupil/teacher ratios, number of high school graduates, number of pupils receiving special education services, and minority enrollment as a proportion of total enrollment.

The tables in this publication provide information about the characteristics cited above. To establish a context for the information on the 100 largest districts, national school district data are also included, as are basic data on the 500 largest school districts.

In the 2000–01 school year, there were 16,992 public school districts, 95,366 schools, and 48.1 million students in public education in the United States and jurisdictions. There were just over 3.0 million full-time-equivalent teachers in the 2000–01 school year and more than 2.6 million high school completers in the 1999–2000 school year. The 100 largest school districts make up less than 1 percent of all public school districts but serve 23 percent of the total number of public elementary and secondary school students (table A). The 100 largest school districts represent 16 percent of schools and employ 21 percent of all teachers. The 500 largest districts make up 3 percent of all school districts, represent 32 percent of schools, and serve 20.6 million students, or 43 percent of the total public elementary and secondary school student population in the United States and jurisdictions (table A).

All of the 100 largest school districts have at least 45,000 students, and 25 of these school districts have over 100,000 students. The largest school district is the New York City Public Schools, with 1,066,516 students enrolled in 1,213 schools. The second largest school district is Los Angeles Unified, with 721,346 students in 659 schools (table B). The enrollment in each of these two largest school districts is greater than the enrollment in each of 26 individual states and the District of Columbia, each of the 5 outlying areas, the Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, and the Department of Defense schools.¹

There are 33 states and jurisdictions that have at least one of the 100 largest school districts (table B). Texas has 15 districts among the 100 largest, Florida has 13, and California has 12. Several other states have more than one district represented in the 100 largest: Georgia has 6; Maryland has 5; Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and Virginia each have 4; Ohio has 3; and Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and New York each have 2. The following states and jurisdictions each have one school district among the 100 largest: Alabama, Alaska, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Washington, and Wisconsin. (The District of Columbia, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico each have only one school district for their entire jurisdiction.)

As expected, these 100 largest districts tend to be in cities and counties with large populations, with administrative offices typically located in large cities and their environs. Many of the districts are in states where the school districts have the same boundaries as counties. However, caution should be used when interpreting the areas that these school districts cover. School district boundaries are not necessarily the same as county, city, or town boundaries. Over 70 percent of these districts are located in coastal and gulf coast states.

By definition, the 100 largest school districts are large, and when compared to the membership distribution of all school districts, they are considerably larger than most. In the 2000–01 school year, 74 percent of all regular school districts² had fewer than 2,500 students while all of the 100 largest school districts had at least 45,000 students (tables B and C). Although 13 percent of regular school districts had 5,000 or more students, 67 percent of students (or 2 out of 3) were served by these districts (table C).

The average school district in the United States and jurisdictions has 5.6 schools compared to the 100 largest school districts, which average 156.2 schools per district (derived from table A). Two of the largest school districts, New York City Public Schools and the Puerto Rico Department of Education, each have over 1,200 schools (table B). The 100 largest school districts, on average, serve considerably more students (110,509 compared to 2,829) and employ more teachers (6,413 compared to 177) per district than the average school district in the nation (derived from table A).

The 100 largest school districts have more students per school than the average school district, 708 compared to 504 (table A). In fact, 11 of the 100 largest school districts have an average regular school³ size of over 1,000 students. In addition to larger school sizes, the 100 largest school districts also have a higher mean pupil/teacher ratio, 17.2 to 1 compared to 16.0 to 1 for the average school district (table A). Across the 100 largest districts, Jordon School District, Utah, has the largest median⁴ pupil/teacher ratio at 24.7 to 1 and Minneapolis, Minnesota, has the smallest at 12.5 to 1.

High school completers. The number of high school completers (diploma recipients and other high school completers) as a percentage of all students is lower in the 100 largest school districts than in the average school district: 4.5 percent of students are graduates in the 100 largest school districts compared to 5.5 percent for the average school district (table A).

School staff. At the national level, 52 percent of staff were teachers⁵ compared to 54 percent among the 100 largest districts. In 6 of the 100 largest school districts, 60 percent or more of all staff were teachers (this does not include the City of Chicago, Illinois, or the Greenville County, South Carolina, school districts because the nonteaching staff categories may be underrepresented in these districts). Twenty of the 100 largest districts had 1 percent or more of their staff assigned to district administration.

Title I participation. Ninety of the 100 largest school districts reported data for Title I eligible schools and programs for the 2000–01 school year. The percentage of Title I eligible schools in the 90 districts varied widely, from 8.9 percent in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District, North Carolina, to 100 percent in the Philadelphia City School District, Pennsylvania.

Charter schools. There were 327 charter schools administered by the 100 largest school districts in the 2000–01 school year. The largest number of charter schools were in the Los Angeles Unified (36), Puerto Rico (36), and District of Columbia (33) school districts.

The 100 largest school districts are not homogeneous, and certain student characteristics, such as race/ethnicity, poverty level, and disability status, vary across the districts.

Race/ethnicity. American Indian/Alaska Natives, Asian/Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, and Black, non-Hispanics make up the minority groups when assessing race at the national level. For some districts, these groups have become the majority population of students. The 100 largest districts, with 23 percent of the United States and jurisdictions' public school students, serve 39 percent of the 19.2 million minority public school students (derived from tables A and D).⁶ In the 100 largest school districts, 69 percent of students are minority students compared to 40 percent of students in all districts (table D). In fact, approximately one-third (33 percent) of the 96 districts where minority membership was available have over 75 percent minority student membership and 8 of the 10 largest school districts have this minority student membership percentage.

Even with the relatively high minority membership in the 100 largest school districts, 34 of the 96 districts report 50 percent or more of their students as White, non-Hispanic. Of these 34 districts, 9 report minority representation of less than 25 percent of their student body. In 18 of the 100 largest districts, half or more of the membership is Black, non-Hispanic. Thirteen districts report that the majority of students are Hispanic; 3 of these are among the 5 largest districts. In Hawaii, which is one district, and San Francisco Unified, California, the majority of students are Asian/Pacific Islander.

For comparison purposes, data from the 2000 Decennial Census are presented in the complete report. These data provide racial and ethnic breakouts of the population less than 18 years old in the district boundaries for the 100 largest school districts.

High school dropouts. For the 1999–2000 school year, 60 of the 100 largest school districts were in states that could report dropouts using the NCES definition of dropouts.⁷ The 9th- through 12th-grade dropout rate in those 60 districts ranged from less than 1 to 26 percent. Thirty-five of the districts had a 9th- through 12th-grade dropout rate between 3 and 10 percent.

Free and reduced-price lunch eligibility. The 100 largest school districts have a disproportionate percentage of students eligible for the free and reduced-price lunch program relative to all public school districts. Among schools that reported free and reduced-price lunch eligibility, 53 percent of students in the 100 largest school districts are eligible, compared to 39 percent of students in all districts (table D). Among the 92 of the 100 largest school districts that reported data on free lunch, 43 districts report over 50 percent of their students eligible for the free and reduced-price lunch program.

Students with disabilities. There are over 1 million students with individualized education programs (IEPs) in the 100 largest school districts. They make up 12.5 percent of all students in these districts. In the largest school district, New York City Public Schools, 14 percent, or 149,525 students, are reported to have IEPs. About 2 percent of schools in the 100 largest school districts are special education schools.

In the 1998–99 school year (fiscal year 1999), $350 billion were collected for public elementary and secondary education in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and outlying areas; 23 percent ($79 billion) of this revenue was collected by the 100 largest school districts. Of the $79 billion in revenue to the 100 largest school districts, a little less than one-third ($24 billion) was received by the 5 largest school districts (New York City Public Schools, Los Angeles Unified, Puerto Rico Department of Education, City of Chicago School District, and Dade County School District). The revenues from the federal government received by 99 of the 100 largest school districts comprised between 2 and 17 percent of all revenues to the district, the exception being the Puerto Rico Department of Education (28 percent).

The 100 largest school districts spent $68 billion (22 percent) of the $305 billion in current expenditures spent in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and outlying areas in 1998–99. The two largest school districts, New York City Public Schools and Los Angeles Unified, spent one out of every five dollars expended by the 100 largest school districts. All but 1 of the 100 largest school districts devoted 50 percent or more of their current expenditures to instruction (the District of Columbia spent 45.3 percent). Of the 100 largest school districts, New York City Public Schools spent the greatest proportion, 72 percent, on instruction.

The current expenditures per pupil were $6,508 for all districts in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, slightly higher than the $6,278 in the 100 largest school districts. Of the 100 largest school districts, 20 districts spent more than $7,000 per pupil (with the Boston School District, Massachusetts, spending the most at $11,040 per pupil).

While there has been a lot of movement within the 100 largest school districts over time, between the 1990–91 and 2000–01 school years, the 100 largest districts remained very similar. Only 11 of the 100 largest districts in the 2000–01 school year were not in the 100 largest in the 1990–91 school year. Clark County School District, Nevada, was the only district to move into the 10 largest districts between these years (it moved from a rank of 14 in 1990–91 to 7 in 2000–01). Clark County includes the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which was the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country between 1990 and 1998 (U.S. Bureau of the Census 2000).

The number of students in the 100 largest school districts increased by 15 percent between 1990–91 and 2000–01, the number of teachers increased by 24 percent, and the number of schools increased by 10 percent. However, while the numbers of students, teachers, and schools in the 100 largest school districts have increased between these years, the proportion of the national total these numbers comprised was essentially unchanged. For example, the number of students in the 100 largest school districts went from 22.9 percent of the students in all districts in 1990–91 to 23.0 percent in 2000–01 (table E).

¹State enrollment can be found in Public School Student, Staff, and Graduate Counts by State: School Year 2000–01 (Young 2002).

²A regular school district is an agency responsible for providing free public education for school-age children residing within its jurisdiction. This category excludes 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 "dummy" agencies).

³A regular school is a public elementary/secondary school that does not focus primarily on vocational, special, or alternative education.

⁴If all the pupil/teacher ratios were listed in order, the midpoint on the list would be the median.

⁵Staff data can be found in Public School Student, Staff, and Graduate Counts by State: School Year 2000–01 (Young 2002). The national staff ratio does not include Bureau of Indian Affairs schools.

⁶For the 100 largest school districts, the numbers of students in different racial/ethnic categories are reported at the school level and are aggregated up to the school district level. The total number of minority students (19.2 million) is from the "State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education." See also Public School Student, Staff, and Graduate Counts by State: School Year 2000–01 (Young 2002).

⁷The CCD defines dropouts as those students who were enrolled in school at some time during the previous school year; were not enrolled at the beginning of the current school year; have not graduated from high school or completed a state- or district-approved educational program; and do not meet any of the following exclusionary conditions: transfer to another public school district, private school, or state- or district-approved education program; temporary absence due to suspension or school-approved education program; or death. For a more detailed description of dropouts and dropout rates, see Public High School Dropouts and Completers From the Common Core of Data: School Years 1991–92 Through 1997–98 (Young and Hoffman 2002).

⁸National revenue and expenditure data were calculated from the state-level "National Public Education Financial Survey" (NPEFS) and can be found in Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary Education: School Year 1998–99 (Johnson 2001). The percentage distributions are based on school district-level data found on the Census Bureau's "Annual Survey of Government Finances: School Systems" (F–33 survey). Department of Defense and Bureau of Indian Affairs schools are not included in these national totals.

Johnson, F. (2001). Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary Education: School Year 1998–99 (NCES 2001–321). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.

U.S. Bureau of the Census. (2000). Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2000. U.S. Department of Commerce. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Young, B. (2002). Public School Student, Staff, and Graduate Counts by State: School Year 2000–01 (NCES 2002–348). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.

Young, B., and Hoffman, L. (2002). Public High School Dropouts and Completers From the Common Core of Data: School Years 1991–92 Through 1997–98 (NCES 2002–317). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.