There were 17,492 operating local education agencies in 2006–07 (table 1). In the 2006–07 school year, 464 local education agencies were closed and 172 were newly opened.
Most of these operating agencies were regular school districts (13,862) that were responsible for educating students residing within their jurisdiction. A total of 1,347 were administrative or service agencies that typically provide services to school districts. An additional 2,283 agencies were operated by the state or some other entity (table 2). Independent charter school agencies comprised 1,908 of the "other education agency" category (table 1).
Of the 49.1 million students served by local education agencies, 48.1 million attended schools in regular school districts (table 2), and 1 million students5 were enrolled in local education agencies other than regular school districts. Administrative and service agencies provided instruction services to 350,000 students.6 State- and federally-operated, and other types of agencies accounted for 686,000 students.7
A total of 10,751 operating regular school districts (77.6 percent) were "unified," that is, responsible for all of grades prekindergarten through 12 (derived from table 3). There is not universal agreement on what grades constitute "elementary" and "secondary" districts. Using grade span as an indicator of a district's instructional level, the 476 districts that had a low grade of 7 or higher and a high grade of 12 are considered secondary districts, while the 2,459 that had a low grade of prekindergarten or kindergarten or higher and a high grade up to 9 are considered elementary. An additional 176 districts served some other combination of grades.
Twenty-seven of the 13,862 regular school districts enrolled 100,000 or more students (table 4). While these largest school districts were less than 1 percent of all districts, they served 12.6 percent of students receiving public education (derived from table 4; table 5).
Some regular school districts were very small. A total of 864 regular school districts (6.2 percent) enrolled fewer than 100 students (derived from table 4).
The greatest number of regular school districts, 7,603, were in rural locales (table 6). An additional 2,772 were in suburban locales; 2,477 were in town locales; and 746 were in city locales.
A total of 38.3 percent of students attended schools in suburban school districts. City school districts served an additional 30.4 percent of students; rural school districts served 18.9 percent of students; and town districts served 12.4 percent of students (table 6).
4 The findings include only the 50 states and the District of Columbia. 5 The number has been rounded to the nearest 1,000,000. 6 The number has been rounded to the nearest 10,000. 7 The number has been rounded to the nearest 1,000.
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