Offset-graders quietly head into the cafeteria at Tulip Grove Unproblematic School in Bowie, Maryland, on Sept. four, 2018. The district is among the 22% of public school districts that start classes after Labor 24-hour interval. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Postal service via Getty Images)

It's the second full week of August, which means millions of American schoolkids are heading back to school or have already started. And depending on where you live, that statement might produce a reaction of either "That sounds about right" or "That seems way too early on!"

When elementary and secondary students go back to schoolDorsum-to-schoolhouse dates in the United States, information technology turns out, vary considerably by state and region, based on our assay of a sampling of the nation'south 13,000-plus public school districts. By the end of this week, for example, virtually all simple and secondary school students in the East Southward Cardinal region – a Census Agency partition that includes Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee – will be back in school. Merely non a single district in the nine New England and Middle Atlantic states will resume classes before Aug. 26, and many expect until after Labor Mean solar day.

The prize for the earliest offset engagement among the 500-plus districts in our sample goes to Arizona's Chandler Unified School District, which serves function of suburban Phoenix. The 44,000 or so students in Chandler Unified went back July 23 (though they get the first of 3 two-week "intersession" breaks starting Sept. 30). At the other extreme are the Trenton, New Jersey public schools, whose most 14,000 students won't go back to school till Sept. nine – the latest opening date in our sample.

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

Broadly speaking, earlier starts are more than common in the South and Southwest: In a rough ring of 13 states stretching from Arizona to Florida and up to Due south Carolina, 79% of the districts we examined will be back in schoolhouse past the finish of this week. Later starts are more common along the Due east 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-schoolhouse dates, arguing that they give families more fourth dimension to take vacations and teenagers more time to work summer jobs. For case, since 1986 Virginia's "Kings Dominion law" (named for the amusement park just north of Richmond) barred well-nigh schools in that state from opening before Labor Solar day. Earlier this twelvemonth, the police force was amended to let districts to open to ii weeks before, and so long as they also give students a iv-day Labor Twenty-four hour period weekend. Still, six of the 10 Virginia districts in our sample are starting their 2019-20 school years afterwards Labor Day; two will open Aug. 26, one on Aug. 22, and one (subject to a special provision) on Aug. 12.

To go a sense of when students head back to school, we looked at the 10 largest local schoolhouse districts by enrollment in each state (except for Hawaii and the District of Columbia, which have only i district apiece). We too examined boosted districts in Texas, Florida and California, so that the concluding 509-commune sample would include the nation'south 100 biggest districts. We excluded private and parochial schools, public lease schools, land-run schools and other educational institutions that often operate on their ain schedules. Our final sample covered about 36% of the nation's 50.6 million public elementary and secondary students.

For each district in the sample, we determined the date or dates on which most of their offset-through-twelfth graders started fall classes. (Kindergartners often start school later than their older peers.) Although a scattering of districts are on some form of year-round schedule, and many others have individual schools that operate year-round, we focused on the "traditional" calendars followed by most schools in a given district. When kickoff dates were staggered by school or grade level, we used a date 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 well-nigh popular first calendar week. Another 74 districts (with 14% of students) went dorsum before this summer; 93 (nineteen% of students) volition start up again next week.

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

Are students going back to school earlier than they used to? Finding school calendars from years and decades by for our sample districts proved to be across the accomplish of this assay, but in that location'due south some bear witness that more secondary-school students, at least, are spending function of their summers in the classroom.

A separate Pew Enquiry Heart analysis constitute that U.South. teens are spending more than of their summertime hours on educational activities – and less time on leisure – than they used to.