Largest Middle Schools in America

Middle school is the federal label for grades 6 through 8 — the bridge between elementary literacy and high school graduation prep. The 100 schools below are the largest middle-grade campuses in the country by total enrollment from the NCES Common Core of Data. Where the school\'s district has reported math and reading assessment results to EDFacts, we display the district\'s proficiency rate alongside enrollment. Researchers running larger cross-sectional analyses can pull the same fields from the Urban Institute Education Data API.

At 15,223 students, Epic Charter School Elementary (Oklahoma City, OK) is one of the largest schools of any kind in the country — a campus closer in scale to a small college than a typical neighborhood school. It heads a top ten where every school enrolls more than 2,182 students.

This page sorts schools by total enrollment as reported in the most recent NCES Common Core of Data release. We do not score, weight, or grade these schools — large enrollment is a description of campus size, not of education quality. Two equally good elementary schools can have very different enrollments because of district boundaries, building capacity, or grade-band configuration.

NCES classifies a campus as Middle when grades fall between 6 and 8. Middle schools sit between elementary literacy work and high school graduation prep, and EDFacts proficiency rates here typically reflect 6th-8th grade testing.

Of the 100 schools shown, 100 carry an EDFacts proficiency rate. The middle of the published distribution is a district-level rate close to the national middle, where roughly half of tested students reach grade-level standards on EDFacts assessments. Missing rates almost always mean the school\'s district was suppressed for privacy or wasn\'t reported in the latest EDFacts file — not that the school skipped testing.

A megaschool middleat the top of this list is not automatically a worse — or better — place to send a 6th-grader than a 500-student rural middle school. The differences are operational. Larger middle schools usually run more elective tracks, more AP / honors strands, more extracurricular options, and more counselor specialization, but the cost is a less personal building. Smaller middle schools usually feel more intimate but offer fewer course-level options. Read enrollment as a description of the educational environment, not as a verdict.

A few honest caveats: EDFacts proficiency and graduation rates are reported at the district level, not the individual school. We apply the district number to every school in that district so that the comparison is at least consistent — but a strong school inside a struggling district will look worse than it is, and vice versa. NCES publishes the most recent year of CCD data with about a one-year lag. Privacy suppression hides results for very small subgroups, which appears as missing data rather than zero.

For a deeper look, click into any school\'s profile to see grade range, charter or magnet flags, the district\'s graduation rate (where applicable), and direct links to the federal record on the NCES School Locator.

We pull every school flagged as Middle in the most recent NCES CCD, sort by total enrollment, and keep the top 100. We do not adjust, weight, or normalize the federal numbers — they appear as published. For the complete data lineage, refresh cadence, and field-level definitions, see the full methodology page.