Large and Small Urban School Districts: Empirical Identification and Comparison Utilizing Student Population

For a variety of reasons, the districts, educators, and students of the largest cities in the United States garner substantial popular and scholarly attention. In the discourse and debate related to urban education, policymakers and researchers often cite accounts and articles derived from these larger urban areas. Yet, we found that school districts educating 47,700 or fewer students accounted for 61 percent of students educated in urban school districts in the United States. Comparison of the composition of student populations revealed that larger urban school districts exhibited greater concentrations of students identified as non-white and receiving free or reduced lunches. Overlooking the variation among urban school districts could result in ineffective reforms, poor educator preparation, skewed funding, and irrelevant research.