Table 1 presents basic data: numbers of students receiving educational services; full-time equivalent (FTE) teachers; 1998-99 completers; and schools for each of the 100 largest districts. Also shown is information to fully identify each school district by its city, state, and county, since the name of the district is not always sufficient for this purpose. On this and all of the other tables, the districts are shown in decreasing order of size (students in membership as of October 1999). Since the districts are arrayed by number of students, it is easy to note the differences in the numbers of teachers, graduates, and schools as they relate to districts of similar size. For example, the Philadelphia School District, Pennsylvania, though smaller in size than the Houston Independent School District, Texas, has more graduates.

For all school districts other than Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Virginia school districts, the teacher count was derived from the school universe survey. (For a more detailed description of the surveys see the methodology section).

Table 2 presents the number of schools in the 100 largest districts, by type of school. All but six of the districts have specialized schools devoted to special, vocational, or alternative education. It can be seen from this table that districts vary widely in their use of specialized versus general schools in educating students with special needs. This table also includes schools that do not have students. Schools may not have students for a variety of reasons, the most common is that the school serves a student population that is "counted" at another school, ex. a vocational education school.

Table 3 presents the numbers of students assigned to the schools in the 100 largest school districts. It should be noted that students attending a specialized school are often counted at their nonspecialized (regular) home school rather than at the specialized school they attend. The number and percentage of students having Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) in accordance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act-Part B, is also shown in table 3.

NOTE: In tables 4 through 9, only schools with student membership (or regular schools with students, as specified in table 4) are used in the data sets from which these tables are derived.

Table 4 provides information on school characteristics in the 100 largest school districts by displaying students (students in membership) at different percentile levels, as well as mean school size for each district (computed using regular schools having membership). For example, in New York City Public Schools, the table shows that the smallest 25 percent of the schools have student membership of 521 or fewer, while the largest 25 percent have student membership of 1,140 or more. Dividing all the students in regular schools in the district by the number of such schools yields a mean, or average, size of 932.0 students. If all the regular schools in New York City were listed by size, the school at the mid-point on the list (the median) would have 784 pupils in membership.

The average school size ranges from a low of 402.7 pupils (Puerto Rico Department of Education) to a high of 1,277.9 (Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District, Texas) for these districts. The largest school in these districts, and also the largest school in the United States, is the 5,380-student G. Holmes Braddock Senior High School in Dade County School District, Florida.

In table 5, data are given on the number of students assigned to graded (three categories) and ungraded levels. In accounting for their students, 61 of the 100 largest districts assign all of their students to numbered grades and 39 use the "ungraded" status for some students in some settings, such as special education, vocational education, and other specialized and alternative programs. In this table, students assigned to all types of schools are counted in the grade for which they are reported.

Table 6 answers the question of how many "elementary" and "high" schools there are in the 100 largest school districts. Since nearly every conceivable grade span is found among the schools in the 100 largest districts, the following four categories are used: primary (low grade of prekindergarten to 3; high grade up to 8), middle (low grade 4 to 7; high grade 4 to 9), high (low grade 7 to 12; high grade 12), and other (all other configurations, including PK, K, or 1 to 12). Although 92 of these school districts have some schools in the "other" category, only in the Puerto Rico school system is the number relatively high (227, or 15 percent). However, there are several districts in Florida in which the proportion of schools that are other than primary, middle or high exceeds that in Puerto Rico, although their absolute numbers do not. These include: Volusia County (24 percent); Polk County (22 percent), and Pinellas, Seminole, and Escambia Counties (20 percent).

Table 7 presents median pupil/teacher ratios for the schools found in the categories established in table 6. Since teacher counts by school were not available for Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Virginia, no pupil-teacher ratio could be calculated for the districts in these states. Among the 100 largest districts, the median pupil/teacher ratio for all schools in a district was 16.7:1. The districts varied from 11.9:1 in St. Paul School District, Minnesota, to 23.2:1 in Jefferson County School District, Kentucky.

Table 8 gives the number of schools in each district in five ranges of percent-minority student membership, as well as the overall minority student percentage for each district. In this report, minority is defined as all race/ethnicities other than white, non-Hispanic. Eight out of the 10 largest school districts have more than 75 percent minority student membership.

Whereas table 8 deals with the number of schools in each district having a minority presence of any kind, table 9 presents the percentage of students in each district by specific racial/ethnic categories. This table illustrates that some school districts are made up of many minority groups while others have high concentrations of one minority group. For example, the New York City Public Schools have 38 percent Hispanic students and 35 percent black students while the Philadelphia City School District has a much higher percentage of black students (65 percent) than any other minority group.

Also shown in table 9 is the number of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. Responses in this data category were available for 92 districts out of the 100 largest. Among these districts, the percentages of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch under the National School Lunch Program varied greatly. Of the 92 districts that did report free and reduced-price lunch eligibility, 46 districts reported that over 50 percent of their students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

Table 10 deals with the school district revenues and expenditures and is based on fiscal year 1998 (which is school year 1997-1998) local government financial data collected by the Governments Division of the U.S. Census Bureau. It presents the amount of revenue received by source (local, state, and federal); current expenditures and those current expenditures for instruction; and current expenditures per pupil in membership for fiscal year 1998. Data for Puerto Rico were obtained from the National Public Education Financial Survey. Among the 100 largest school districts, Boston School District, Massachusetts, had the highest expenditure per pupil ($10,293), and Puerto Rico Department of Education the lowest ($3,210). Overall, there were 13 school districts with per pupil expenditures greater than $7,000 and 5 school districts with per pupil expenditures less than $4,000.

Whereas table 10 deals with the dollar amounts of revenues and expenditures, table 11 presents the percentage of revenues by sources as well as the percentage of current expenditures spent on instruction. The 100 largest school districts spent 63 percent of their current expenditures on instruction.

Table 12 presents the different types of staff in each district. Teachers represented the largest proportion of staff. Of the 98 districts reporting staff by type, 67 districts reported that 50 percent or more of their staff were teachers, 5 districts had over 60 percent teachers. For those districts that did not report one of the staff categories, the percentage distribution across all types of staff could not be calculated.

Table 13 reports the number and percentage of students in Title I eligible schools and school-wide programs. The 1999-2000 school year was the second year the CCD collected this information. Not all states were able to report this information. The percentage of Title I eligible schools in districts that provided the information varied widely, from 3 to 100 percent. Of 90 districts that reported at least one Title I school, 33 reported that 100 percent of Title I schools were also Title I school-wide eligible.

Table 14 also reports new data items beginning in the 1998-99 school year; that is magnet and charter schools. Only 42 of the 100 largest districts were able to report that magnet schools could exist in their districts, while 52 districts reported they had charter schools or were located in states that do not have charter schools. Many charter schools function as their own school districts which is why many of the districts in this report may be in states that have charter school legislation but do not report having any charter schools.

A few of the new items starting in 1998-99 asked for the numbers of students receiving services for Limited English Proficient (LEP) and migrant students. Table 15 reports these totals for those districts that provided this information. Sixty of the 100 largest districts reported the number of students receiving migrant services in the previous school year. Palm Beach County School District, Florida, reported the most migrant students served at 7,698 students. Hillsborough County School District, Florida reported the most migrant students served in summer migrant services, 1,544. Eighty-three of the 100 largest districts were able to report students served in Limited English-Proficient (LEP) programs. Santa Ana Unified School District, California, reported the highest percentage of LEP students, 67.4 percent.

Table 16 reports the percentage of 1997-98 school year dropouts for those school districts in states that were able to report dropouts using the NCES dropout definition (see Glossary for definition). Forty-six of the 100 districts have data on this table.