Overview of the 100 Largest School Districts

In the 2004–05 school year, there were 17,662 public school districts, 98,579 public schools, and over 49.5 million students in public schools in the United States and jurisdictions (table 1). Additionally, there were over 3.1 million full-time equivalent (FTE)² teachers in the 2004–05 school year and 2.6 million high school completers in the 2003–04 school year.³ The 100 largest school districts comprised less than 1 percent of all public school districts but served 23 percent of all public elementary and secondary students. These school districts contained 17 percent of all public schools and employed 20 percent of all FTE teachers. In comparison, the 500 largest school districts comprised 3 percent of all public school districts, comprised 32 percent of public schools, and served 43 percent (21.4 million) of all public elementary and secondary students in the United States and jurisdictions.

The 100 largest school districts ranged in size from 46,711 to 986,967 students in 2004–05 (table A-1). Twenty-seven of these districts served over 100,000 students. The largest public school district was New York City Public Schools, New York, with 986,967 students enrolled in 1,205 schools. The next largest was the Los Angeles Unified district, California, with 741,367 students in 721 schools. The enrollment of each of these two largest districts was greater than the enrollment of each of the 28 smallest states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, each of the four outlying areas, and the Department of Defense dependents schools (overseas and domestic).⁴