About 70 percent of the 46.7 million public school students in the United States are now back in the classroom, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis. Depending on where you grew up or where you live now, your reaction might be: “Sounds right,” “Already?” or “What took them so long?”
The Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to determine when public schools in the United States start classes. We collected school start dates for the 2023-24 school year from a nationally representative, stratified random sample of 1,573 districts.
To create this data set, we started with a stratified random sample of 1,500 public school districts used in a 2023 Center analysis of school district mission statements (this analysis covers only “regular” public school districts and their equivalents · institutions such as charter schools and state special schools are excluded). This sample was drawn from a comprehensive list of public school districts maintained by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). For more details on how this previous sample was selected, please read the methodology for this analysis.
We then supplemented this stratified sample in several ways:
- One region no longer exists and was removed from the dataset.
- Because school districts in Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York City are not classified as “regular local districts” but as “constituent districts,” the original sample ignored them. Thus, we drew an additional sample of 72 regions from these regions and added it to the original sample.
- The lone districts in Hawaii and Washington, DC, neither of which were originally selected, were also added so that at least one district from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia would be represented.
Data were weighted to account for each district's probability of selection in both the original and supplemental samples. It was then calibrated so that both the weighted number of districts and the weighted number of students matched the totals for all eligible districts on the NCES list.
After these adjustments, we had a sample of 1,573 regions. For each, we manually searched their website to find their 2023-24 calendar. If we couldn't find a calendar (or a working website), we called the regional office. In the end, we found start dates for 1,551 regions. The rest were coded as “no data”.
In most cases, districts had a single reopening date for all their schools. When start dates differed, we used the date that applied to most grade levels. In the few cases where we could not reliably determine this, we followed the earliest reopening date in the calendar.
In some areas, some schools may follow a “year-round” calendar rather than the “traditional” calendar (late summer/early fall to late spring/early summer). In these cases, we used the start date on traditional calendars, as these were more comparable to the vast majority of US school districts. As of the 2017-18 school year, only approx 3% of public schools were on any type of timetable throughout the yearaccording to the US Department of Education's National Survey of Teachers and Principals.
Student enrollment data is from the NCES database and is for the 2021-22 school year. Additionally, each region was coded as belonging to one of the Nine geographic divisions of the US Census Bureau for regional analysis.
Some, but not all, US school districts offer pre-kindergarten classes. Student weights for each district in the sample include pre-K students when appropriate, but start dates are based on grades K-12.
Information about the laws and policies governing school start dates in each state came from Education Committee of the Statesa nonprofit research organization serving education policy makers across the country.
For most US K-12 students, the school year lasts about 180 days, spread over about 10 months with a long summer break. Within this broad time frame, however, there are significant regional variations, according to our analysis of more than 1,500 public school districts. (The analysis covers only “regular” public school districts and their respective districts; institutions such as charter schools and state special schools are excluded.)
For example, school tends to start earlier in southern areas than further north, in general. More than two-thirds of students in the US Census Bureau's East South Central division – Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee – returned to school the week of Aug. 7. They joined another 19% of students who had started classes earlier. In the West South Central division (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas), 94% of students returned to school between August 7 and August 18.
But in the six New England states, almost no one goes back to school before the week of August 28. And students in the Mid-Atlantic states – New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania – return even later: About three-quarters will.” It didn't go on the books until after Labor Day, which falls on September 4 this year.
Even within districts, districts in more southern states sometimes start classes earlier than those further north. For example, within the extended South Atlantic segment, sampled districts in its southernmost states (Florida and Georgia) have similar start date patterns to those in the eastern South Central region, while the segment's northernmost jurisdictions (Maryland, Delaware, and DC) they more closely resemble areas in areas north.
Some states stand out from the general trends in their region in other ways. In the West North Central region, for example, about two-thirds of public school students start classes between August 14 and August 25. However, Minnesota law requires schools to start after Labor Day in most cases, and the vast majority of Minnesota areas in the sample will return after the holidays.
In the Census Bureau's eight-state mountain division, which stretches from the Canadian border to the Mexican border, nearly half of public school students return to school overall between Aug. 14 and 25. But nearly all sample districts in Arizona and New Mexico, the two southernmost states in this segment, start one to three weeks earlier.
Why do the start dates vary so much?
While such geographic variations are quite evident, the reasons for them are less clear. State laws certainly play a role: 16 states create windows, either by statute or rule, for when school must start, according to data from the Education Committee of the States and individual state educational agencies. But even in those states, the rules are fairly lax – they simply require school to start before or after a certain date – and waivers for individual districts are not uncommon.
Contrary to popular belief, the school calendar is not a remnant of the nation's agricultural past. In fact, in the early 20th century, farm schools typically ran summer and winter sessions, with children working on farms in the spring and fall to help with planting and harvesting. Urban schools, on the other hand, were open almost all year round, although many children attended sporadically or only part of the year.
Between about 1880 and 1920, calendars of urban and rural schools converged into the pattern we know today, due to factors such as pressure from education reformers, the high cost of keeping schools open year-round, the shift from one-room schoolhouses for age educationand lower attendance at urban schools during the summer months (especially as family vacations grew in popularity).
Another possible explanation, for both the traditional calendar and the regional clustering of start dates, is “network effect”, in which a given standard becomes more useful as it is more widely adopted. It is easier, for example, for a school district to hire teachers from neighboring districts if those districts are in similar programs.
School start dates may vary even more in the future due to climate change. Some education experts predict that warmer temperatures could be in store force districts to adjust their start dates or timesespecially in places like the Southwest if schools can't update their air conditioning systems or make other accommodations.
Note: This is an update of a post originally published on August 14, 2019.
