• Types of Public Schools and Agencies
• Student Membership
• Instructional Level
• School and School District Size
• Other School Characteristics
• Student Program Participation and Selected Characteristics
• References

States reported over 92,000 public elementary/secondary schools in the 1999-2000 school year.¹ This was an increase of almost 7 percent over the more than 86,000 schools reported 5 years earlier, in the fall of 1994.² 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 reported only with the membership of that regular school (table A).

Among the schools that reported students in membership, almost 94 percent were regular schools (table 1). The second largest category with student membership was that of alternative education schools (4 percent), followed by special education schools (about 2 percent). Note that roughly two-thirds of the vocational schools identified in table A, as well as smaller proportions of other types of schools, do not appear in table 1 because no students were reported in membership for these schools.

In the 1998-99 school year, the CCD began reporting schools operated by the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the domestic Department of Defense Dependents Schools as separate entries, and they are not included in the U.S. totals shown in the tables in this report. Some, but not all, of these BIA and Department of Defense schools previously were included in the states within whose boundaries they were located.

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 almost 89 percent of local agencies in 1999-2000 (table 2). A smaller proportion, about 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 4 percent of the reported agencies were operated directly by a state or federal government or were other than any of the preceding categories. The number of regular school districts increased by 1 percent from the 14,772 reported in 1994 to a total of 14,928 in 1999-2000.

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 and are reported on the CCD with a separate education agency for each charter school. When this occurs, the districts are reported under the category of "other education agency." For example, although not all states designate a separate agency for each charter school, in the District of Columbia the establishment of 27 charter schools explains why the District is shown with 28 local education agencies in table 2.

Table A.—Public elementary and secondary schools in the United States: 1999-2000

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 1999-2000

Table 2. —Number and percentage of public elementary and secondary education agencies, by type of agency and by state: School year 1999-2000

In the 1999-2000 school year, 89,599 public schools provided instruction to 46.9 million students in the United States (table 1), an increase of less than 1 percent over the 46.5 million students in 1998 (Hoffman 2000, table 1). Five states (California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas) 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 1999-2000 students, 98 percent, were reported enrolled in regular schools. Some 1 percent were in alternative schools, and special education or vocational schools each accounted for less than 1 percent of students. Mississippi, New Hampshire, and North Dakota operated only regular schools.

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 89,599 schools with membership during the 1999-2000 school year, 58 percent spanned the primary grades, beginning with prekindergarten or kindergarten and going no higher than grade 8 (table 3). Middle schools, those with grade spans ranging from as low as grade 4 to as high as grade 9, made up almost 18 percent of schools with students. High schools (low grade of 7 or higher, high grade of 12) were another 19 percent of schools. Some 5 percent of schools had a grade configuration that did not fit into any of these three categories.

A total of 14,571 regular school districts reported students in membership for 1999-2000 (table 4). As with schools, grade span categories were assigned by the lowest and highest grades offered. Approximately 73 percent of school districts included the range of grades from prekindergarten or kindergarten to 9 or higher, and they accounted for 92 percent of all public school students. (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 less than 6 percent of students were in districts going no higher than grade 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.

Primary schools tended to be smaller than middle and high schools (table 5). The average number of students in a primary school was 446 in 1999-2000. Middle schools served, on the average, 595 students each, while the average-sized high school had 752 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 1,400 students or more in Florida and Hawaii.

Student/teacher ratios were higher in primary schools, which had a median number of 16.2 students for each teacher, than in high schools, with a median number of 14.8 students per teacher (table 6). (The median is the point at which one-half of the schools had larger student/teacher ratios and one-half had smaller. Note also that student/teacher ratio is not the same as average class size, which includes only teachers who are assigned to a classroom.) The median number of primary students for each teacher ranged from a low of fewer than 13 in Nebraska, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming to a high of more than 20 in Kentucky and Utah.

Twenty-five school districts enrolled 100,000 or more students, while 1,809 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 under 2 percent of school districts reported 25,000 or more students, almost one-third (32 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.

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 one of every six students was in a large city school in 1999-2000; a smaller proportion, about 1 in 10, attended a rural school that was not within the fringes of an urban area.

Thirty-four states and the District of Columbia recognized charter schools in 1999-2000. Of this group, 30 reported the number of charter schools (table 9). The number ranged from a single charter school in Delaware, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Oregon to more than 200 in Arizona and California. In the District of Columbia, charter schools accounted for more than 8 percent of public school enrollment, more than double the proportion reported for any state. (Note that almost 9 percent of Puerto Rico's public school students were reported to be enrolled in charter schools.)

Table 3.—Percentage of public elementary and secondary schools and percentage of students in membership, by instructional level and by state: School year 1999-2000

Table 4.—Number of regular public school districts providing instruction and percentage of students in membership, by grade span and by state: School year 1999-2000

Table 5.—Average public school size (mean number of students per school), by instructional level and by state: School year 1999-2000

Table 6.—Median public school student/teacher ratio, by instructional level and by state: School year 1999-2000

Table 7.—Distribution of regular public school districts and students, by district membership size: School year 1999-2000

Table 8.—Distribution of public schools and students, by community type: School year 1999-2000

States were asked to identify magnet schools. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia reported that they did not have magnet schools, and 18 of those states with magnet schools were unable to identify them. Table 9 lists the number of magnet schools for the 17 states that reported this information. California and Illinois reported the greatest number of magnet schools, 473 and 350, respectively. Illinois serves about 12 percent of its students in magnet schools; in California, the figure is about 9 percent.

Table 9 shows the number of Title I eligible schools by state, and the number of these schools that have schoolwide Title I programs. Seven states did not identify which of their schools were eligible for Title I services. Of those that could provide this information, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Montana, and New Hampshire reported that three-fourths or more of all their public school students were in Title I eligible schools. Within the states identifying schools with schoolwide Title I programs, more than one-half of the students were enrolled in these schools in the District of Columbia and Mississippi.

Table 9.—Number of Title I, magnet, and charter schools and percentage of students served, by state: School year 1999-2000

Nationally, over 12 percent of public school students had a special education Individual Education Program (IEP) in 1999-2000 (table 10). Among those states that did not underreport students with IEPs, the proportion ranged from over 10 percent in Colorado to almost 19 percent in New Mexico and Rhode Island.

Only 35 states and the District of Columbia reported the number of students receiving services for limited English proficiency (LEP). In California, there were 1.4 million LEP service recipients (almost one-fourth of all students) in 1999-2000, while Texas reported more than half a million students receiving LEP services.

Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia provided information about the number of migrant students who received appropriate services during the 1998-99 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. The greatest number of migrant students served, more than 116,000, was reported by Texas, although that state did not provide information about summer school programs. Florida had the second-highest enrollment of migrant students during the regular school year, more than 40,000 students.

All but four states reported the number of students eligible for free- or reduced-price meals. More than one-half of all students in the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Mexico were eligible for this program. The largest numbers of students eligible for free- or reduced-price meals were in California, with more than 2.8 million eligible students, and Texas, with almost 1.8 million.

Table 11 shows the distribution of minority students across cities, urban fringe areas, and small towns or rural communities in 1999-2000. In some states, the more urban districts were composed primarily of minority students. Three-fourths or more of students were minority group members in the large or mid-sized city schools of the District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York. 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 Hawaii, Mississippi, and New Mexico, one-half or more of the students were minority group members.

Table 10.—Number and percentage of public school students participating in selected programs, by state: School year 1999-2000

Table 11.—Minority student enrollment, by community type and by state: School year 1999-2000