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Education Statistics Quarterly
Vol 5, Issue 2, Topic: Elementary and Secondary Education
Overview of Public Elementary and Secondary Schools and Districts: School Year 2001–02
By: Lee M. Hoffman
 
This article was originally published as a Statistical Analysis Report. The universe data are primarily from the following two components of the Common Core of Data (CCD): "Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey" and "Local Education Agency Universe Survey." Technical notes, definitions, and supplemental tables from the original report have been omitted.
 
 

This report summarizes information about public elementary and secondary schools and local education agencies in the United States during the 2001–02 school year. The information is provided by state education agencies through the Common Core of Data (CCD) survey system.


States reported 94,112 public elementary/secondary schools in the 2001–02 school year (table A).* This was an increase of more than 11 percent over the 84,578 schools reported in the fall of 1991. (Comparisons with 1991 are based on table 89 in Snyder and Hoffman [2002].) Most of these were regular schools, those that offer a comprehensive curriculum and may provide other programs and services as well. A smaller number of schools focused primarily on special education, vocational/technical education, or alternative programs. Students in these specialized schools were often enrolled in a regular school as well and were reported as part of the membership of either the regular or the special school, but not both. Note that two-thirds of the vocational schools identified in table A, as well as smaller proportions of other types of schools, do not report students in membership.

Among the 91,380 schools that reported students in membership, 98 percent were regular schools (derived from table 1). The second largest category with student membership was that of alternative education schools (1 percent), followed by special education schools and vocational schools (0.4 percent each).

School districts and other types of agencies

Most local education agencies are those that are typically thought of as "school districts." Operated by a local school board, they provide instructional services for students and comprised 85 percent of local agencies in 2001–02 (table 2). A smaller proportion, 8 percent, were supervisory unions or regional education service agencies whose major responsibility is to offer administrative, special program, testing, or other services to school districts. Finally, around 7 percent of the reported agencies were operated directly by a state or federal government agency or were other than any of the preceding categories. The number of regular school districts decreased by 4 percent from the 15,173 reported in 1991 to a total of 14,559 in 2001–02.

Charter school districts

The governance of charter schools varies from state to state. In some cases they are not considered under the administration of the regular public school district within whose boundaries they operate. In these cases, each charter school is reported on the CCD with its own local education agency. These agencies are reported under the category of "other agencies." For example, in the District of Columbia the establishment of 33 charter schools explains why the District is shown with 34 total agencies in table 2. Fully 960 of the other agencies shown in table 2 are charter school districts.

Table A. Public elementary and secondary schools in the United States: 2001–02

  Total Regular Special Vocational Alternative
Total schools in United States 94,112 85,619 1,987 1,023 5,483
 
Reporting students 91,380 84,919 1,641 328 4,492
 
Not reporting students 2,732 700 346 695 991
 

NOTE: Data include the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), "Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey," 2001–02.

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In the 2001–02 school year, 91,380 public schools provided instruction to 47.7 million students in the United States (table 1). Five states (California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas) each enrolled more than 2 million students in their public schools. At the other end of the size distribution, the District of Columbia and Wyoming reported fewer than 100,000 students.

Most of the 2001–02 students, 98 percent, were reported enrolled in regular schools. One percent were in alternative schools. Special education or vocational schools each accounted for less than one-half of 1 percent of students. Kansas, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Oklahoma reported only regular schools.

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Schools come in all combinations of grades. To allow comparisons across states, instructional level is determined in this report by the lowest and highest grade in a school. Among the 91,380 schools with membership during the 2001–02 school year, 58 percent spanned the primary grades, beginning with prekindergarten or kindergarten and going no higher than grade 8 (table 3). The proportion of students who were enrolled in primary schools averaged 49 percent across all states, ranging from 42 percent in Alaska to 59 percent in the District of Columbia.

Middle schools, those with grade spans ranging from as low as grade 4 to as high as grade 9, made up 17 percent of schools with students. High schools (low grade of 7 or higher, high grade of 12) accounted for an additional 19 percent of schools. Some 6 percent of schools had a grade configuration that did not fit into any of these three categories.

A total of 14,229 regular school districts were reported to have students in membership for 2001–02 (table 4). As with the instructional levels of schools, grade span categories of school districts were assigned by the lowest and highest grades offered. Approximately 75 percent of school districts included the comprehensive range of grades from prekindergarten, kindergarten, or grade 1 to 9 or higher, and they accounted for 92 percent of all public school students. These comprehensive school districts accounted for all, or all but one, of the districts in 17 states. (In fact, only in Arizona, Illinois, Montana, and Vermont did as many as one-third of the students attend school districts with other grade spans.) A little more than 5 percent of students were in districts with no grade higher than 8, and about 2 percent were in secondary districts with no grade lower than 7. Less than 1 percent of students were enrolled in districts with some other range of grades.

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Primary schools tended to be smaller than middle and high schools (table 5). The average number of students in a primary school was 441 in 2001–02. Middle schools served, on average, 612 students each, while the average-size high school had 753 students. There was considerable range in school size across the states. High schools ranged from an average of fewer than 300 students in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota to more than 1,500 students in Florida.

Student/teacher ratios were higher in primary schools, which had a median number of 16.0 students for each teacher, than in middle or high schools, which had a median number of 15.7 and 15.1 students per teacher, respectively (table 6). (The median is the point at which half the schools had larger student/teacher ratios and half had smaller. Note also that student/teacher ratio is not the same as average class size, since not all teachers are assigned to a classroom.) The median number of primary students for each teacher ranged from a low of fewer than 13.0 in Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming to a high of 21.5 in Utah.

Twenty-five school districts enrolled 100,000 or more students, while 1,692 districts served fewer than 150 students (table 7). While few in number, the larger districts included a considerable portion of the students in America's schools. Although less than 2 percent of school districts reported 25,000 or more students, one-third (33 percent) of students attended school in these districts. At the other end of the size range, more than one-third of school districts had fewer than 600 students, but these districts accounted for only 3 percent of public school enrollment.

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The majority of schools, 57 percent, were in large or midsize cities or their accompanying urban fringe areas (table 8). These schools accounted for more than two-thirds (69 percent) of all public school students. About 1 of every 6 students was in a large city school in 2001–02; a smaller proportion, about 1 in 10, attended a rural school that was not within a metropolitan statistical area (MSA).

Title I schools

Table 9 shows the number of Title I eligible schools by state, and the number of these schools that have schoolwide Title I programs. Three states did not indicate which of their schools were eligible for Title I services. Among those states that could provide this information, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, and South Dakota reported that more than 7 out of 10 public school students were in Title I eligible schools. In the District of Columbia, Mississippi, and Texas, more than half of the students were enrolled in schools with schoolwide Title I programs.

Magnet schools

States were asked to identify magnet schools. Forty-five states were able to report magnet school information (table 9). Of these, 28 states had at least one magnet school, 2 states reported no magnet schools, and an additional 13 reported that the category of magnet schools was not applicable in their state. Two of the 45 states reported magnet status for less than 80 percent of their schools and are not included in this distribution. California and Illinois reported the greatest number of magnet schools, 456 and 420, respectively. Illinois served 15 percent of its students in magnet schools; in California, the figure was 9 percent.

Charter schools

Thirty-nine states (including the District of Columbia) recognized charter schools in 2001–02. Of this group, 37 reported having one or more charter schools in operation (table 9). The number of schools ranged from a single charter school in Indiana, Maine, and Mississippi to more than 300 in Arizona and California. In the District of Columbia, charter schools enrolled almost 9 percent of all public school students.

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Nationally, 13 percent of public school students had special education Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) in 2001–02 (table 10). Among those states reporting students with IEPs, the proportion ranged from 10 percent in Colorado to 20 percent in Rhode Island.

Some 47 states (including the District of Columbia) reported the number of students who were English Language Learners (ELLs) and receiving English language services. In California, there were 1.5 million ELL service recipients (one-fourth of all students) in 2001–02, while Texas reported more than half a million (one in seven students) receiving ELL services.

Forty-one states (including the District of Columbia) provided information about the number of migrant students enrolled during the 2000–01 school year or the following summer. Because a single migrant student may enroll in several schools during the year, this is a duplicated count of students. Therefore, table 10 cannot estimate the proportion of students who were migrants. California reported the greatest number of migrant students served when regular school year and summer program participants were combined, almost 331,000.

All but four states reported the number of students eligible for free or reduced-price meals. More than half of all students were eligible for this program in the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and West Virginia. The largest numbers of students eligible for free or reduced-price meals were in California, Texas, and New York, with 2.9, 1.9, and 1.2 million eligible students, respectively.

Table 11 shows the distribution of minority students (all groups except White, non-Hispanic) across cities, urban fringe areas, and small towns or rural communities in 2001–02. Across the United States, about 39 percent of public school students were members of minority groups. Sixty-three percent of students in large or midsize city schools were minority students, while only 21 percent of students in small town and rural schools were. In the large or midsize city schools of nine states and the District of Columbia, three-fourths or more of students were minority group members. The proportion was highest in the District of Columbia, where 87 percent of students were minority members. Small town and rural schools tended to have smaller proportions of minority students, but this was not the case for all states. In the small town and rural schools of Arizona, Hawaii, Mississippi, and New Mexico, half or more of the students were minority group members. (The District of Columbia is not included in this list because it operates only a single school that can be classified as "small town or rural.")

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List of Tables:

  • Table 1.—Number of public elementary and secondary schools with membership and percentage of students in membership, by type of school and by state: School year 2001–02
  • Table 2.—Number and percentage of public elementary and secondary education agencies, by type of agency and by state: School year 2001–02
  • Table 3.—Percentage of public elementary and secondary schools and percentage of students in membership, by instructional level and by state: School year 2001–02
  • Table 4.—Number of regular public school districts providing instruction and percentage of students in membership, by grade span and by state: School year 2001–02
  • Table 5.—Average public school size (mean number of students per school), by instructional level and by state: School year 2001–02
  • Table 6.—Median public school student/teacher ratio, by instructional level and by state: School year 2001–02
  • Table 7.—Distribution of regular public school districts and students, by district membership size: School year 2001–02
  • Table 8.—Distribution of public elementary and secondary schools, by community type and by state: School year 2001–02
  • Table 9.—Number of Title I, magnet, and charter schools and percentage of students served, by state: School year 2001–02
  • Table 10.—Number and percentage of public school students participating in selected programs, by state: School year 2001–02
  • Table 11.—Percent of students who are minority, by community type and by state: School year 2001–02
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Footnotes

*

CCD respondents include the 50 states, the District of Columbia, the Department of Defense dependents schools, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the five outlying areas (American Samoa, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands). Totals in this report are limited to the 50 states and the District of Columbia, referred to collectively as "the states."


Snyder, T.D., and Hoffman, C.M. (2002). Digest of Education Statistics: 2001 (NCES 2002–130). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

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Data sources: The following components of the NCES Common Core of Data (CCD): "Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey," 2001–02; "Local Education Agency Universe Survey," 2001–02; and "State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education," 2001–02.

For technical information, see the complete report:

Hoffman, L.M. (2003). Overview of Public Elementary and Secondary Schools and Districts: School Year 2001–02 (NCES 2003–411).

Author affiliation: L.M. Hoffman, NCES.

For questions about content, contact Lee Hoffman (lee.hoffman@ed.gov).

To obtain the complete report (NCES 2003–411), call the toll-free ED Pubs number (877–433–7827) or visit the NCES Electronic Catalog (http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch).


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