Corrected: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described how many public school students attend suburban schools. It is a plurality of students.
How many K-12 public schools, districts, and students are there? What does the American student population look like? And how much are we, as a nation, spending on the education of these youth?
These data points bring perspective to the implications and potential impacts of education policies. The Education Week library provides answers to these questions, and some other enlightening facts, below.
This page will be updated when new federal data becomes available. Federal data is typically released several years after it is collected.
How many schools are there in the U.S.?
Here’s what this looks like in chart form:
How many are traditional public schools, public charter schools, or private schools?
While charter schools are often the topic of debate, they make up only a small portion of all schools.
Among public schools, how many high schools are there in the U.S.?
What is the average public school size?
What is the average public school size by type of location?
How many schools offer online courses?
According to 2020-21 NCES data , 28.7 percent of public schools, including charters, offered at least one course entirely online before the pandemic. Almost a third (30.6 percent) of charter schools offered an entire course online, versus 28.5 percent of traditional public schools. Only 17.3 percent of private schools offered at least one course entirely online before the pandemic.
How many virtual schools are there?
According to 2019-20 NCES data , there are 691 virtual schools in the U.S. The NCES defines virtual schools as “having instruction during which students and teachers are separated by time and/or location and interact via internet-connected computers or other electronic devices.”
How many school districts are there?
Note: Regular districts exclude regional education service agencies and supervisory union administrative centers, state-operated agencies, federally operated agencies, and other types of local education agencies, such as independent charter schools.
What is the most common size for a school district?
In 2021-22 , the plurality of regular school districts (23.9 percent) had 1,000 to 2,499 students enrolled. In the 1979-80 school year, in contrast, small school districts were the largest category, making up 26.5 percent of all districts.
How has the size of school districts changed over time?
The number of regular school districts in the U.S. decreased from 15,944 in 1979-80 to 13,318 in 2021-22 . In that time, the percent of districts that were large (over 25,000 students) grew from 1.1 percent of districts to 2 percent. The percent of very small districts (with enrollment under 300 students), decreased from 26.5 percent to 19.2 percent in that same period.
Where are the largest school districts in the U.S.?
| Rank | District name | State | Enrollment |
| 1 | New York City | NY | 859,514 |
| 2 | Los Angeles Unified | CA | 435,958 |
| 3 | Chicago | IL | 329,836 |
| 4 | Miami-Dade County | FL | 328,589 |
| 5 | Clark County | NV | 315,787 |
| 6 | Broward County | FL | 256,037 |
| 7 | Hillsborough County | FL | 224,149 |
| 8 | Orange County | FL | 203,224 |
| 9 | Houston | TX | 194,607 |
| 10 | Palm Beach County | FL | 187,943 |
How many students attend public schools?
How many students attend charter schools?
According to data from two years earlier , over 3.71 million students, or 7.6 percent of all public school students, attend charter schools.
How many students attend private schools? What are the religious affiliations of those schools?
How many students are homeschooled?
Where do most students attend school—the city, the suburbs or rural areas?
According to 2022 data , a plurality of public school students attend suburban schools, but enrollment in urban schools is not far behind.
What are the demographics of public school students?
