Compiled from official source data by PlainSchools.
8 public K-12 schools in Ames from NCES Common Core of Data: enrollment, grade span, demographics, and Civil Rights Data Collection statistics for every active campus.
According to NCES CCD 2024-25, Ames has more public-school enrollment than 52% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. Ames sits in the broad middle of the national city distribution rather than at a single obvious extreme. Its scale, average Resource Investment Index, and staffing position need to be read together: a middle placement on one measure does not cancel a stronger or weaker result on another. The percentile panel makes those dimensions explicit, and the school table shows where the city aggregate breaks into materially different campus profiles.
The school portfolio is elementary-weighted
5 of Ames's 8 listed schools are elementary campuses. That composition means citywide enrollment and staffing averages are influenced more by early-grade operating patterns than by the city's 1 middle and 1 high-school records. Families comparing later grades should rely on those individual rows rather than the all-school mean.
Campus spread matters more than the city mean
The 13-point gap between Fellows Elementary School and Ames High School shows the range hidden by Ames's average Resource Investment Index. The city figure is useful for national placement, but families ultimately choose among campuses with different grade spans, enrollment, district affiliations, and reported support fields. Start with schools serving the relevant grade level, then compare the index components rather than assuming the city average describes any one classroom.
City enrollment
Top 48%
School count
Top 54%
Resource Index average
52nd percentile
Teacher staffing
58th percentile
Ames High School accounts for 30.7% of all Ames public-school enrollment
That dominant concentration means Ames-wide averages can mask substantial variation outside the largest entity. Grade level: High. The share measures enrollment concentration only; it does not establish how districts allocate programs, capital, or staff. Enrollment-weighted aggregates give this entity more weight than any smaller peer, while an unweighted entity average treats every record equally.
Ames school enrollment varies 5.9× across entities
Ames school enrollment ranges from 244 students (lowest) to 1,440 students (highest), a spread of 1,196 students. That relatively narrow ratio reflects an unusually homogeneous school portfolio for a city this size. Per-school staffing and program breadth can differ sharply at opposite ends of that enrollment range, so the city average should not be treated as a typical campus.
Ames operates one school district — a single-district system
Ames's listed schools share one district boundary, budget authority, and reporting chain. That makes citywide and districtwide governance easier to compare, but it does not make individual campuses uniform: grade configuration, staffing, programs, and student need can still vary materially within the same school district.
Ames student-teacher ratio is 14.7:1 — near the typical range (US average ~15.7) — citywide staffing is neither unusually lean nor unusually crowded by this measure
student-teacher ratio is the simplest comparative metric but it does not capture the full picture: the ratio counts FTE classroom teachers against total enrollment, push-in specialists, English-language aides, special-education co-teachers, and counselors are not included in most reporting Variation between sub-units within Ames is typically wider than the Ames-aggregate figure suggests.
Most racially and ethnically mixed schools in Ames
Ranked by the Simpson student-body diversity index (0-100) from NCES race and ethnicity data, where higher means a more evenly mixed student body. It measures mix, not quality.
Which Ames school has the highest Resource Investment Index? ▼
Fellows Elementary School has the highest Resource Investment Index among the Ames schools in this federal-data comparison at 47/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.
How many schools are in Ames, IA? ▼
Ames has 8 public schools with a total enrollment of 4,688 students. Average student-teacher ratio: 14.7:1.
Data from NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) 2024-25 and Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) 2021-22. The Resource Investment Index uses reported student-teacher ratio,
counselor access, gifted programs, and attendance; it is not an academic rating. Cities must include at least five schools to be listed. This public-data comparison is for informational purposes:
verify current enrollment, attendance boundaries, and programs with the school district before acting. See the guide to understanding NCES data.
