Compiled from official source data by PlainSchools.
10 public K-12 schools in Carthage 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, Carthage has more public-school enrollment than 56% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. Carthage lands in the upper national tier on both the average Resource Investment Index and teacher staffing intensity. Those measures come from different inputs: the index combines reported counselors, gifted access, attendance, and staffing, while the staffing percentile compares the city's student-teacher ratio directly. Agreement across both measures is stronger evidence of broad reported capacity than either score alone, though neither is a test-score rating or a guarantee about an individual classroom.
The school portfolio is elementary-weighted
5 of Carthage's 10 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 2 middle and 1 high-school records. Families comparing later grades should rely on those individual rows rather than the all-school mean.
A small portfolio contains radically different campus scales
Carthage lists only 10 schools, yet reported enrollment runs from 116 to 1,626 students, a 14-fold range. In a portfolio this compact, the smallest record may be a specialized or nonstandard setting rather than a miniature version of the largest campus. That distinction affects how ratios and program fields should be read. Compare similarly configured grade levels first; combining the extremes into one city average conceals more than it explains.
City enrollment
Top 44%
School count
Top 41%
Resource Index average
92nd percentile
Teacher staffing
77th percentile
Carthage High School accounts for 32.1% of all Carthage public-school enrollment
That dominant concentration means Carthage-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.
Carthage school enrollment varies 14× across entities
Carthage school enrollment ranges from 116 students (lowest) to 1,626 students (highest), a spread of 1,510 students. That spread reflects typical urban portfolio variation between specialty programs and large neighbourhood schools. 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.
The reported share clears the 50% majority mark. Title I operates under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015), but its statutory allocation uses additional LEA-level counts and rules not represented by this average. This percentage is an economic-need context measure; it does not establish a Title I award, show dollars received, or describe how funds are distributed among campuses.
Carthage operates one school district — a single-district system
Carthage'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.
Carthage student-teacher ratio is 13.2:1 — low (typically associated with smaller schools or per-school staffing investment that often correlates with stronger per-student supports)
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 Lower values often correlate with smaller scale and population characteristics rather than higher resource budgets per se.
Most racially and ethnically mixed schools in Carthage
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 Carthage school has the highest Resource Investment Index? ▼
Mark Twain Elem. has the highest Resource Investment Index among the Carthage schools in this federal-data comparison at 67/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.
How many schools are in Carthage, MO? ▼
Carthage has 10 public schools with a total enrollment of 5,070 students. Average student-teacher ratio: 13.2:1.
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.
