Search

This Annual Statistical Report of the Public Schools of Arkansas, Open Enrollment Public Charter Schools, and Education Service Cooperatives, 2023-2024 Actual and 2024-2025 Budgeted (ASR) is submitted in compliance with the provisions of A.C.A. § 6-20-2201 et seq. The information contained in the report was obtained from the Annual Financial Report (2023-2024 actual) submitted in Cycle 9, and Budget (2024-2025 budgeted) submitted in Cycle 1. The school districts are listed according to Local Education Agency (LEA) number in the Rankings report, and are ranked from highest to lowest on the following data: (1) Per Pupil Expenditures; (2) Average Daily Attendance (ADA); (3) Average Daily Membership (ADM); (4) K-12 Licensed Full-Time Equivalent (FTE); (5) Average Salary of K-12 Licensed (FTE); (6) Licensed (FTE); and (7) Average Salary of Licensed (FTE).

Massive online user review platforms, with their star ratings and text reviews, are reshaping the information available for consumer and public service decisions. We study the leading K-12 schooling platform, GreatSchools, applying machine learning (Natural Language Processing, NLP) to 600,000 reviews that encompass the vast majority of the nation's traditional public, charter, and private schools (84,009 schools in total), supplemented with qualitative analysis of a subsample of reviews. Encompassing more than fifty million words of text, our initial analysis pre-specified eight broad topics and 27 sub-topics and coded review words into these categories. We find that parents write the vast majority of reviews and tend to write more about School Staff and School Culture than students. More generally, text reviews vary in important ways across user types (parents, students, teachers, principals), school sector (traditional public, charter, and private schools), grade level, and demographics. The partial correlation between topics and star ratings also differs across user types and sectors. Taken together, these results suggest that user reviews are less useful than they appear and less useful than with other kinds of products. Our analysis points to design features that might improve their usefulness. The variation in content and value of the reviews also has methodological implications as it shows how NLP can complement qualitative research methods with such large volumes of text.

A January 2024 survey found that 72 percent of parents had considered a new school for their children in the past year. And in 2025, Texas and Tennessee are poised to become the next states to enact education savings account (ESA) programs, potentially giving millions more students the education options that their parents want for them. As a result, alternatives to traditional public education are booming. From 2010 to 2021, the number of charter schools increased by 2,500, while the number of public schools decreased by 2,100. Public charter school enrollment skyrocketed over that time from 1.8 million to 3.7 million students. And the number of students residing in states that have enacted ESAs now stands at nearly 22 million. However the benefits of school choice are constrained by narrow standardized testing options, which influence curriculum and teaching approaches. This brief argues that testing choice will relieve educators of the burden of teaching to tests that do not meet their diverse approaches. It also recommends state policymakers should provide for a diverse suite of testing choices at the K-12 and college entrance levels.

The U.S. Department of Education has projected enrollment declines over the next decade, leading to budget cuts for school districts, which will be particularly impactful in urban and rural areas serving vulnerable students. As federal COVID-19 funds expire, districts will face challenges in cutting costs, potentially leading to layoffs or school closures. Meanwhile, many states have expanded voucher programs and charter schools, diverting funds from public schools despite limited enrollment growth. Research shows these shifts harm traditional public school financing. To address this, policymakers must ensure equitable funding for public schools and hold charter and private schools to the same standards as public ones.

Studies of charter closure rates typically focus on year-to-year closures. While important for researchers, such studies provide little guidance to families seeking to understand the risk of enrolling their child in a charter school. That is because studies determining how many schools close each year provide no information on how long the school served students. Although every school's fate cannot be predicted, there are trends. This report summarizes what was learned while highlighting cases that illustrate the effects of school closures on the families and communities they serve. It also show that school closures are more voluntary than forced, with 40 percent of closures giving parents little, if any, advance warning. More often than not, it found patterns of decreasing enrollment or other warning signs that school officials ignored or failed to share with the families they served. [This report is a partnership with the National Center for Charter School Accountability (NCCSA).]

This fifth of six briefs exploring data from the 2020-2021 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) data, released earlier this year, explores the access of students with disabilities to the educational opportunities that make college possible for most students: SAT and ACT testing, Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) coursework, and dual enrollment programs in colleges and universities.

This third of six briefs analyzing data from the U.S. Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), covering the 2020-21 school year, explores the educational settings where students with disabilities spend their time. As was the case in the analysis of the previous CRDC covering the 2018-19 school year, students with disabilities spend more time in general education settings in charter schools than in traditional public schools. Students with disabilities are also underrepresented in gifted and talented education (GTE) programs, an important complement to ensuring students are educated in the least restrictive environment and provided access to general education curricula.

Collected Biannually since 1968, the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) represents the U.S. Department of Education's most substantial effort to understand data related to students' educational opportunities throughout K-12 schooling, particularly for historically marginalized student populations. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department delayed planned data collection in the 2019-20 school year to the 2020-21 school year and released that data in November 2023. Center for Learner Equity (CLE) has produced a series of briefs that use CRDC data to understand the overall state of access and opportunity for students with disabilities in both traditional public and in charter schools. This report describes the methodological decisions necessary to produce the findings across the six briefs, particularly decisions made on variable use, data cleaning, and how to report findings.

This final of six briefs analyzing data from the U.S. Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), covering the 2020-21 school year, explores the characteristics of the 176 charter schools with a specific focus on students with disabilities. This group, representing 2.3% of charter schools nationwide, is heavily concentrated in a handful of states and is particularly focused on students identified as having autism, emotional disturbances, and intellectual disabilities. With students in these schools spending significantly less time in general education settings, student experiences in specialized charters are fundamentally different in important ways from the experiences of students with disabilities in charter schools on the whole.

This second of six briefs analyzing data from the U.S. Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), covering the 2020-21 school year, explores enrollment of students with disabilities by race, gender, English proficiency, and primary disability to gain a fuller picture of educational equity. It is recognized that such categories can, at times, conceal as many differences as they reveal. However, it is believed that attention to differences in access by student groups opens a broader conversation about ensuring equity for all students, regardless of their individual circumstances.

This first of six briefs analyzing the latest available data from the U.S. Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), covering the 2020-21 school year, explores enrollment of students with disabilities by school sector, state, grade level, and charter legal status--that is, operating as a local education agency (LEA) or as part of an LEA. The goal is to understand the major trends affecting students with disabilities.

This fourth of six briefs analyzing data from the 2020-2021 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), released earlier this year, focuses on the experiences of students with disabilities with disciplinary practices at both charter schools and traditional public schools. Though the COVID-19 pandemic was still in its early stages, concerns about the impact of school-based safety measures on student behavior and disproportionate discipline practices were widespread. While this brief shows ongoing declines in suspensions, restraints, seclusion, and referrals to law enforcement, it also demonstrates an unequal and concerning over-application of disciplinary actions for students with disabilities.

For too long, Ohio underfunded its public charter schools. That policy was unfair to charter school students--many economically disadvantaged--whose educations received less taxpayer support simply by virtue of their choice of schools. It was also unfair to charter schools, which were required to serve children on fewer dollars than the districts nearby. Thanks to the leadership of Governor DeWine, Lieutenant Governor Husted, and the General Assembly, Ohio has recently made significant strides in narrowing the charter funding gap. One of the most critical initiatives is the Quality Community School Support Fund. Since FY 2020, this program has provided supplemental aid to quality charter schools--currently, in the amount of $3,000 per economically disadvantaged pupil ($2,250 per non-disadvantaged). Our latest report is an evaluation of the high-quality charter funding program. It finds positive results: The additional dollars have allowed charters to boost their teachers' salaries, reduced staffing turnover, and driven student learning gains.

Despite a decline from the previous year, rates of chronic absenteeism for Wisconsin's students -- defined as missing more than one in ten school days for any reason -- remained at historically high levels in 2023 for children of every race, grade level, and socioeconomic status. District leaders point to many causes, including lasting impacts of the pandemic. Some have made improvements through strong communication campaigns and concerted, districtwide efforts.

Charter schools are public schools, free and open to all. Like traditional public schools, charter schools are prohibited from charging tuition, must not discriminate in admissions or be religious in their operation or affiliation, and are overseen by a public entity. There is a growing body of research highlighting the superior performance benefits of growing well-designed portfolio systems that include a mix of both traditional and charter public schools. This report's findings add credence to the long-stated supposition that public charter schools create a competitive dynamic that compels traditional district schools to upgrade their teaching and learning to maintain enrollment, so that conditions improve for all children. Another common explanation, as charter schools uncover better ways of motivating learning, other schools in that same geography then adopt those innovative practices. Or, an increase in school options to make it more common for parents to find a school that is the optimum fit for unlocking their child's potential. The report concludes with recommendations for further research into why increased public school choice lifts school quality and how cities that currently have even a small share of public charter school students can strengthen their gap-narrowing capacity. [Preface by Will Marshall.]

This PACER brief provides RFA's updated analysis of data on students experiencing homelessness in Pennsylvania, highlighting prevalence, challenges with identification, disparities in educational opportunities, and impact on academic outcomes. Our main findings include that: (1) Roughly 2% of students in Pennsylvania were identified as experiencing homelessness in 2021-22, a slight increase from prior years; (2) Pennsylvania has seen a statewide increase in the identification rate of homelessness (the rate of student homelessness/the rate of students in poverty), but continues to rank below the national average, now 30th out of the 50 states; (3) Students experiencing homelessness are heavily concentrated in Pennsylvania's most inadequately funded school districts, which provide fewer educational opportunities, and are increasingly enrolled in cyber charter schools where research has documented consistently poor overall student outcomes; and (4) Pennsylvania's students experiencing homelessness are exhibiting worse academic outcomes compared with all students and other economically disadvantaged students. These findings underscore the urgent need for school leaders and policymakers in Pennsylvania to prioritize new resources and comprehensive strategies to support students experiencing homelessness.

Since the peak of the pandemic in 2020, enrollment in virtual schools has steadily increased, with virtual schools now accounting for approximately 1.4% of the nation's public school students. While the effects of the pandemic on student achievement and mental health have been extensively studied, research has yet to thoroughly examine the impact of the pandemic on state policies and local organizational practices related to virtual schooling. Although some believed the onset of the pandemic would fundamentally reshape virtual schooling options in K-12 education, others were more skeptical, believing expanded virtual learning options were merely a temporary fix. This study examines whether the pandemic shaped virtual schooling at both the local and state levels, and if the changes made are likely to last and/or improve equity. The authors interviewed state and local education leaders and advocates, analyzed policy documents, websites, and media, observed legislative proceedings, and examined organizational practices in a sample of schools between 2019 and 2022 in Oregon. This state had an extensive history of virtual schooling before the pandemic, and enrollment continues to grow. The findings offer important lessons for policymakers and leaders to consider as the availability of virtual schools remains widespread across the country.

We use data from the applications North Carolina public school districts and charter schools submitted for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) to investigate the sense that educational leaders made of the pandemic as it unfolded. LEAs understood the pandemic as a multifaceted problem. Nearly all applications addressed four problems: (1) public health, (2) academics and learning loss, (3) student and community well-being, and (4) instructional access. However, we document considerable variation in problem emphasis over time, across LEAs, and across organizational sector. The pandemic was not a single organizational problem, but many simultaneous problems posed in varying and shifting combinations. We argue this multi-faceted organizational view should be a starting point for assessments of LEAs' pandemic response.

We examine the efficiency of traditional school districts versus charter schools in providing students with teachers who meet their demographic and education needs. Using panel data from the state of Michigan, we estimate the relationship between enrollment of Black, Hispanic, special education, and English learner students and the presence of Black, Hispanic, Special Education, and ESL teachers, and test whether this relationship differs at charter and traditional district-run schools. Because charter schools typically have less market power in hiring than large districts, we compare charter school employment practices to traditional public schools in districts of comparable size. Our results suggest that charter schools are more likely to employ same race teachers for Black students but not Hispanic students, and districts schools are slightly better at providing ESL and SPED teachers. We conclude that charter autonomy does not necessary generate better student-teacher matches, but Michigan charters may occupy a market niche by serving Black students and staffing Black teachers.

This is the executive summary for the report "Roll Call: A Landscape Review of the Students, Financing, and performance of Milwaukee's K-12 Schools." The report takes stock of the changes that have occurred in the city's overall "system" of schools, including student enrollment and demographics, financing, and outcomes. Key observations from the report's analysis are provided.

This report arrives during a time of heightened scrutiny and civic engagement. While public attention is currently trained primarily on Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), this research encompasses the whole of the city's education system, marking both commonalities and differences between different types of publicly funded schools. It highlights financial aspects of the system but also expands the discussion to include student enrollment and outcomes. The report is organized into three major sections: Milwaukee's Students and Schools, covering the basic schooling options available to students along with student enrollment and demographic trends; School Funding in Milwaukee, outlining the core funding mechanisms and their funding levels for schools in the city; and Student Outcomes and School Performance, summarizing broad trends in Milwaukee's academic results. The report concludes with key insights for the consideration of both policymakers and the public. It is hoped the report's findings ground both current and future policy discussions with important facts and nonpartisan insights. The authors further intend to inform those discussions with a second report this fall, which will highlight promising K-12 practices and innovations occurring both within Milwaukee and nationally.

Catholic schools have seen more than a 30% decline in enrollment over the past 20 years. While some of the decline in enrollment may have been spurred by secular trends or the Church abuse scandal, the increase in schools of choice, principally public charter schools, may explain at least some of this decline. In this paper we estimate the effect of the opening of charter schools in proximity to Catholic schools across the entire U.S. We find that the opening of a nearby charter school has a negative impact on Catholic school enrollment and increases the likelihood that the school will close. We also find that charter openings induce greater racial isolation. Findings are especially pronounced in K8 schools, rather than high schools.

This report emphasizes the importance of state actions in improving educational opportunities for historically marginalized students, particularly those with disabilities. It highlights the existing achievement gaps and challenges faced by students with disabilities, especially those from minority groups. The report suggests that states have a critical role in strengthening charter schools' capacity to meet the needs of students with disabilities, but it also points out that the current state actions in this area have been limited, primarily focusing on ensuring compliance with laws rather than addressing resource gaps or improving educational outcomes.

This report documents two distinct stages of decision-making regarding new charter school proposals. The first is a "development" decision which includes the following: (1) further study of a new charter school; (2) considering participation in a charter consortium; or (3) study of a federal Charter Schools Program grant or subgrant for a new or replicated charter school. The second is an "implementation" decision which is defined as (1) an approved charter contract between the district and the operator of a charter school for a new charter school; (2) an approved written agreement to participate in a consortium; or (3) a signature on a federal Charter Schools Program grant or subgrant for a new or replicated charter school. For the purpose of this definition, petition and proposal can be used interchangeably. The department conducted an electronic survey and personally contacted school district officials to compile the necessary data. One hundred percent of Wisconsin school districts responded to the survey.

Over the past two decades, researchers have spent countless hours studying the impacts of public charter schools--independently-run, tuition-free schools of choice that serve some 3.7 million U.S. students today. Just prior to the pandemic, studies from Ohio and nationally indicated that charters on average delivered superior academic outcomes compared to traditional districts. And the very finest charters in Ohio and around the nation were driving learning gains that gave disadvantaged students the edge needed to succeed in college and career. The pandemic scrambled most everything about K-12 education. But did it upend what we know about charter school performance? The present study examines the post-pandemic performance of Ohio's brick-and-mortar charter schools, which enrolled 81,000 students--mostly from urban communities--during the 2022-23 school year. The results reveal that, in terms of student achievement growth, Ohio's charter schools remain a better educational option for the average charter student.

This First Look report introduces new data for national and state-level public elementary and secondary revenues and expenditures for fiscal year (FY) 2022. Specifically, this report includes the following school finance data: (1) revenue and expenditure totals; (2) revenues by source; (3) expenditures by function, subfunction, and object; (4) current expenditures; (5) revenues and current expenditures per pupil; (6) expenditures from Title I funds; and (7) revenues and expenditures from COVID-19 Federal Assistance Funds. The expenditure functions include instruction, support services, food services, and enterprise operations. The support services function is further broken down into seven subfunctions: instructional staff support services, pupil support services, general administration, school administration, operations and maintenance, student transportation, other support services (such as business services).1 Objects reported within a function or subfunction include salaries and wages, employee benefits, purchased services, supplies, and equipment. The finance data used in this report are from the National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS), a component of the Common Core of Data (CCD). The CCD is one of NCES's primary survey programs on public elementary and secondary education in the United States. State education agencies (SEAs) in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the five other jurisdictions of American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands report these data annually to NCES. The NPEFS instructions ask SEAs to report revenues and expenditures covering prekindergarten through high school public education in regular, special, and vocational schools; charter schools; and state-run education programs (such as special education schools or education programs for incarcerated youth).

May 17, 2024 marks the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that ruled segregated schools were "inherently unequal." At the time, North Carolina was one of 17 states that enforced de jure segregation, that is, segregation by law. The state of North Carolina and the school districts within the state have played prominent roles in our nation's history of school desegregation. North Carolina's public school enrollment is increasingly multiracial, and the expansion of school choice means that a growing share of students attends charters and private schools, both of which tend to be more segregated than traditional public schools. On the cusp of this important anniversary, the authors assess where North Carolina schools are now in terms of school desegregation, as segregated schools are systematically linked to unequal educational opportunities and outcomes, while desegregated schools are associated with numerous short-term, long-term, academic, and nonacademic outcomes for individuals and society.

In this paper, the authors draw on evolutionary theories of change and qualitative data from 2019-2022, to explore the impact of the pandemic on K-12 virtual education in a state with a long history of virtual schooling by asking: "How has the ongoing COVID pandemic influenced virtual schooling in Oregon?" A virtual school in this study is a public charter school -- affiliated with either a nonprofit or for-profit education management organization, or a non-profit or district board and approved by the district, state or governing body -- or a district-run school, that offers instruction only via technology, in which students and teachers are physically separated, and interact synchronously or asynchronously (Barbour & Reeves, 2009; Keaton, 2021; Nowicki, 2022). In particular, the authors examine how the health crisis affected state-level virtual schooling policies and local organizational practices, whether there is evidence of deep and lasting changes, why, and the implications for equity.

This report analyzes changing racial composition in a comparable subset of schools to enable policy-relevant comparisons between charter and magnet schools. It reports the levels of segregation and diversity in these two systems, which is important because of strong evidence that diverse schools produce educational gains and substantial lifelong benefits in terms of college, employment, and other key life goals. Primary data was acquired from the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Common Core of Data (CCD), and Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data. In the school districts where both forms of choice were tried, magnets have done better than charters at modestly integrating students. An obvious explanation for this is that a basic mission of magnets, especially initially, was to address racial isolation. Policymakers interested in gaining the benefits of integration through choice might look closely at magnet schools. The higher segregation in charter schools observed in this analysis, coupled with other studies with similar findings, suggests that reforming charter schools, if not advancing alternatives like magnet schools or something even more powerful, is needed to address segregation and its well-documented harms.

"Brown v. Board of Education" held that the educational systems of seventeen states that mandated segregated schools violated the Constitutional guarantee of equal protection. The decision helped set off the civil rights revolution. However, after so many years of backlash, schools of the South are dramatically less segregated than what existed before "Brown." "Brown" brought to a head the conflict between the professed belief in equal opportunity and the reality of clearly inferior schools for Black and Latino children. Many whites saw the desegregation changes that the courts and federal agencies ordered as a threat. From a civil rights perspective, the battle was for connecting young people of color to transformative educational opportunities. Opponents mobilized and they attacked the courts and the law. This report examines the changing patterns of segregation and diversity in U.S. public schools, updating earlier work with contemporary and historical data. At a time when U.S. social and political polarization are severe and race relations are dangerously strained, schools matter even more.

As the sector's gatekeepers, charter school authorizers are responsible for ensuring that schools in their purview set students up for success. To that end, they provide various forms of scrutiny and technical assistance, decide whether existing schools' charters should be renewed, and--perhaps most important--set the bar for the approval of new schools. Yet, while prior research has examined how the content of charter applications predicts the academic performance of newly created schools, there is almost no research on the actions taken by the charter authorizing body during the approval process. Such information might help authorizers improve those processes with the goal of strengthening their school portfolios. Accordingly, this study examines the extent to which the ratings of application reviewers and their votes on authorization predict the success--or, at least, the initial success--of schools that are authorized. The authors used data on application ratings and votes from the North Carolina Charter School Advisory Board (CSAB), as well as seven years of student-level administrative data. Findings suggest that authorizers can distinguish between stronger and weaker applicants, board members' professional judgment is at least as important as whatever appears in a school's written application, and raising the bar for approval would not significantly improve charters' chances of success.

On April 2, the Milwaukee Public Schools will ask Milwaukee voters to allow the district to exceed state revenue limits by up to $252 million over four years to support its schools and programs. Here, we give our impartial take on the referendum, based on more than a decade of annual reviews of MPS' budget and finances. Our intent is to frame for Milwaukee voters how they might consider this critical matter and to better inform citizens throughout Wisconsin given the increased frequency of school referenda throughout the state.

In September 2022, CLE began a multi-phase study on the feasibility of creating a centralization entity (Educational Service Agency) to coordinate special education across New Orleans' decentralized system of autonomous charter schools. This executive summary of the study examines the interests and concerns of the New Orleans school community and families of students with disabilities regarding the current state of special education program delivery and their relative interest in exploring the creation of an Educational Service Agency. We also conducted case studies from other cities whose charter sectors have solved special education infrastructure challenges through Educational Service Agencies. Our study was conducted in close collaboration with NOLA Public Schools, which retained the Public Consulting Group for companion analysis on special education costs and opportunities for improved efficiencies. We shared our comprehensive findings on December 5 in New Orleans with an audience of over 50 local charter school and special education leaders, nonprofit partners, local funders, and community members. Notably, nearly 80% of New Orleans school stakeholders reached through our study confirmed their interest in the system exploring an Educational Service Agency to remedy long-documented special education challenges. As the next step, we are supporting NOLA Public Schools by architecting an Educational Service Agency in partnership with interested local charter schools. As a follow-up, we will publish two comprehensive papers detailing our findings on New Orleans stakeholder perspectives and the role of Educational Service Agencies as a special education infrastructure model for charter schools. [This brief was supported by funding from The Booth-Bricker Fund and the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.]

For more than twenty-five years, public charter schools have served Ohio families and communities by providing quality educational options beyond the local school district. But it's no secret that we've also had a long-standing debate over whether increasing school choice impacts students who remain in traditional districts. In important--and sometimes impassioned--discussions such as these, rigorous research is critical to ground conversations in facts and evidence. Our latest report offers an analysis of the rapid scale-up of Ohio charter schools during the late 1990s and early 2000s. It finds that charters slightly boosted the graduation and attendance rates of traditional district students, while having no significant impacts on their state exam scores. These results follow a body of research from various locales showing that expanding educational choice--whether via public charter schools or private schools--consistently yields neutral to slightly positive impacts on traditional districts.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have been a catalyst for transformation in K-12 through initiatives, including diversifying teaching pipelines, starting new schools, and establishing programs designed to meet the aspirations of students far away from quality opportunities. HBCUs and their alumni have played powerful roles in K-12 public education, including charter schools. Alumni are leading outstanding charter learning institutions with exceptional student outcomes, and some HBCUs have partnered with charter schools in effective ways including integrating charter schools on their campuses. This arrangement provides students with a unique experience in which they are introduced to the promise and prestige of higher education earlier in their educational journey. Utilizing that expertise and record of achievement is especially important now. America's public schools lag behind those of our international competitors, both in terms of student attainment and educational equity. The lasting influences of a global pandemic, particularly for lower-income students and students of color, have magnified the challenges of our outdated K-12 system -- one that was not working well for many students even before COVID-19. This report examines the potential for HBCUs to make high-stakes decisions about who is able to start new public schools, what outcomes those schools should meet, and what to do when adults fail students.

In the largest U.S. metropolitan areas, suburban school districts enroll 14.4 million students, far more than the 6 million students enrolled in the same metros' urban districts. In fact, students enrolled in the suburban school districts surrounding the 25 largest metropolitan areas represent roughly 30% of the nation's entire public school enrollment. Suburban growth has occurred alongside the creation of a segregated, metropolitan society through policy, law and practice. Discriminatory loan practices, federal highway construction, site selection for subsidized housing and exclusionary zoning are examples of how racial discrimination permeated to origins suburban society. State and federal governments are dominated politically by those representing suburban constituents too often eager to maintain an exclusionary status quo. As shifting populations change suburban school enrollment, education policy trends formerly confined to urban districts have spread to suburban ones. Many suburban school districts have experienced growth in the charter school sector, as well as a rash of school closures. Suburban schools and districts reflect broader societal problems, paradigms, and possibilities. This paper draws on federal enrollment data from the nation's largest 25 metros from 2011-2020 to descriptively analyze suburban school enrollment and segregation at the school district-level, seeking to understand different district contexts and their relationship to student segregation.