This report is released annually and provides basic information from the Common Core of Data (CCD) about the nation's largest public school districts. The data include such characteristics as the number of students and teachers, number of high school completers and the averaged freshman graduation rate, and revenues and expenditures.

The purpose of this publication is to provide basic descriptive information about the 100 largest school districts (ranked by student membership, that is, the number of students enrolled at the beginning of the school year) in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Bureau of Indian Education, the Department of Defense dependents schools (overseas and domestic), and the four outlying areas (American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands). In this report, the terms “United States and jurisdictions” and “national total data” refer to these entities. This is different from most National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports, which include only the 50 states and the District of Columbia in the totals.  

Almost one in four public school students in the United States and jurisdictions is served by one of the 100 largest school districts. These districts are distinct from all school districts by characteristics other than just the size of their membership. They also vary by average school size, median pupil/teacher ratio, and minority enrollment as a proportion of total enrollment.