States with the Most School Districts

By the Numbers: States with the Most School Districts

This ranking covers 51 jurisdictions (all 50 states plus the District of Columbia) using public school districts from the NCES Common Core of Data F-33 Local Education Agency Finance Survey, FY2022. Texas leads the list at 904, while Hawaii sits at the bottom with 1 - a 903 spread between the highest and lowest reporting state. The national mean is 224.706 with a median of 139, a gap that reveals how concentrated the top of the distribution is.

District-count ranking reflects historical governance decisions, not modern efficiency. Hawaii operates a single statewide district while Texas maintains over 1,000. State-level consolidation efforts have been slow and politically contentious - community attachment to locally controlled schools is strong. High fragmentation typically correlates with wider intra-state achievement and funding gaps.

The F-33 survey covers all public Local Education Agencies (LEAs) reporting to NCES, capturing total instructional salary expenditure (variable Z33), enrollment, per-pupil spending, and revenue by source. Estimated teacher salary figures are derived by dividing Z33 by teacher FTE - these are district-level aggregates, not individual contracts. Private schools, charter networks with separate reporting, and federal BIE schools sit outside this dataset. Year-over-year comparisons require caution: district consolidations, reporting methodology changes, and late filings can shift rankings by several positions without reflecting underlying policy change. Click any state below to see per-district salary breakdowns and state-level licensing context.