Starting time-graders quietly caput into the cafeteria at Tulip Grove Uncomplicated School in Bowie, Maryland, on Sept. iv, 2018. The district is amidst the 22% of public school districts that start classes after Labor 24-hour interval. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Mail via Getty Images)

Information technology's the 2nd full week of Baronial, which means millions of American schoolkids are heading back to school or have already started. And depending on where yous alive, that argument might produce a reaction of either "That sounds about right" or "That seems manner besides early!"

When elementary and secondary students go back to schoolBack-to-school dates in the The states, information technology turns out, vary considerably by state and region, based on our analysis of a sampling of the nation's 13,000-plus public school districts. Past the cease of this week, for case, nearly all simple and secondary schoolhouse students in the Eastward South Central region – a Census Agency division that includes Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee – will be back in school. Only not a single district in the 9 New England and Eye Atlantic states will resume classes before Aug. 26, and many wait until after Labor Mean solar day.

The prize for the earliest start date amidst the 500-plus districts in our sample goes to Arizona's Chandler Unified School District, which serves part of suburban Phoenix. The 44,000 or so students in Chandler Unified went back July 23 (though they get the first of three two-week "intersession" breaks starting Sept. 30). At the other extreme are the Trenton, New Bailiwick of jersey public schools, whose nearly fourteen,000 students won't go back to schoolhouse till Sept. ix – the latest opening date in our sample.

In the U.S., first day of school varies by region

Broadly speaking, earlier starts are more common in the South and Southwest: In a rough band of 13 states stretching from Arizona to Florida and upward to Due south Carolina, 79% of the districts we examined will be back in school by the cease of this week. Later starts are more mutual along the Eastward Coast (from Maine to North Carolina), the upper Midwest (Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan) and the Northwest (Oregon and Washington).

Historically, the tourism and hospitality industries have favored later back-to-school dates, arguing that they give families more fourth dimension to have vacations and teenagers more than time to piece of work summertime jobs. For example, since 1986 Virginia's "Kings Rule law" (named for the amusement park just due north of Richmond) barred most schools in that state from opening before Labor Solar day. Earlier this twelvemonth, the constabulary was amended to permit districts to open up up to two weeks before, so long as they also give students a four-twenty-four hour period Labor Day weekend. Even so, six of the 10 Virginia districts in our sample are starting their 2019-20 school years after Labor Day; two will open Aug. 26, ane on Aug. 22, and one (subject to a special provision) on Aug. 12.

To get a sense of when students caput dorsum to school, we looked at the 10 largest local school districts by enrollment in each state (except for Hawaii and the District of Columbia, which have only 1 district apiece). We likewise examined additional districts in Texas, Florida and California, so that the final 509-district sample would include the nation's 100 biggest districts. Nosotros excluded individual and parochial schools, public charter schools, state-run schools and other educational institutions that frequently operate on their ain schedules. Our final sample covered about 36% of the nation's l.6 million public elementary and secondary students.

For each commune in the sample, we determined the date or dates on which most of their commencement-through-12th graders started fall classes. (Kindergartners often start school afterwards than their older peers.) Although a handful of districts are on some form of twelvemonth-round schedule, and many others take individual schools that operate year-round, we focused on the "traditional" calendars followed by well-nigh schools in a given district. When outset dates were staggered by schoolhouse or grade level, we used a engagement range.

All told, 124 of the districts in our sample (representing 29% of students) are starting schoolhouse between Aug. 12 and Aug. 16, making it the near popular start week. Another 74 districts (with 14% of students) went back earlier this summer; 93 (19% of students) volition start upwards over again adjacent week.

Simply 105 districts (14% of students) won't start until the last week of August – and nearly half of these (48) are in New England or the Eye Atlantic states (New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania). An additional 113 districts (with 23% of students) won't resume classes till afterwards Labor Day, all but 22 of which are north of the Bricklayer-Dixon line. (The 22 exceptions are in nearby Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.)

Are students going back to schoolhouse earlier than they used to? Finding schoolhouse calendars from years and decades by for our sample districts proved to exist beyond the achieve of this analysis, only in that location'southward some evidence that more secondary-schoolhouse students, at least, are spending part of their summers in the classroom.

A dissever Pew Inquiry Heart analysis found that U.S. teens are spending more of their summer hours on educational activities – and less time on leisure – than they used to.