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States with the most public elementary schools, 2016-17

Nov. 24, 2020
California had more than 7,000 public elementary schools in 2016-17

The Digest of Education Statistics 2018, published by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in December 2019, says the United States had 66,837 public elementary schools in 2016-17.

The NCES categorizes a campus as an elementary school if the earliest grade is 6 or below and it has no grade higher than 8.

Elementary schools accounted for more than two-thirds  of the nation's 98,158 public schools

California, the most populous state, had the most public elementary schools—7,037.

Here are the 10 states with the greatest number of public elementary schools.

State            Number of public elementary schools

California              7,037
Texas                     6,122
New York              3,273
Illinois                    3,048
Florida                   2,845
Ohio                       2,399
Pennsylvania        2,124
New Jersey          1,950
North Carolina     1,919
Georgia                 1,775

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