What Do We Know about New Schools in the United States?

A new report from the Carnegie Corporation of New York finds that more than half of America's public schools opened in the last 30 yearsand that's a big deal.

"That is wild!" says Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education.

"As a country we really need to get serious about finding novel solutions for kids and educators."

The report found that 93,502 public, elementary, and secondary schools were operating in the 2019-'20 school year, and 31,912 of them didn't exist 30 years earlier.

That's about a third of all kids enrolled in public schools in New York City.

The report looked at publicly available data on new school openings over the last three decades, "right up to the pandemic," as Carnegie puts it.

It found that at least half of the new schools were intentionally designed as an alternative to existing options.

For example, one in five new charter schools is a charter school.

The report doesn't indicate whether a school was intentionally created or for other reasons, such as in response to student enrollment numbers, but there are some proxies.

For example, one in five new schools is a charter school.

The Carnegie Corporation has been investing in new schools for more than 20 years

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