19 public K-12 schools in Sterling from NCES Common Core of Data: enrollment, grade span, demographics, and Civil Rights Data Collection statistics for every active campus.
National city placement
According to NCES CCD 2024-25, Sterling has more public-school enrollment than 86% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. Sterling 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.
14 of Sterling's 19 listed schools use NCES's combined or “other” grade-level classification. Citywide averages therefore blend campuses serving unusually broad or nonstandard grade spans with conventional elementary, middle, and high schools. Grade configuration is a first-order comparison here, not a minor label.
Sterling's schools share one district authority while their average Resource Investment Index ranks at the 97th percentile among listed cities. Shared governance removes one source of policy variation, but it does not erase campus differences by grade span or enrollment. The 32-point gap between W.O. Robey High and Park View High measures the remaining local spread. Use the district-level picture for common budget context, then compare the school components to see whether staffing, counseling, gifted-program reporting, or attendance accounts for each campus's position.
Sterling school enrollment ranges from 59 students (lowest) to 1,453 students (highest), a spread of 1,394 students. That spread is wider than typical and predicts noticeable gaps in service quality between the highest and lowest areas. 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.
Source: NCES Common Core of Data
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.
Source: NCES Common Core of Data
Sterling'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.
Source: NCES Common Core of Data
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.
| # | School | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | W.O. Robey High | 74 |
| 2. | Forest Grove Elementary | 63 |
| 3. | Sterling Middle | 61 |
| 4. | River Bend Middle | 59 |
| 5. | Lowes Island Elementary | 59 |
| 6. | Algonkian Elementary | 59 |
| 7. | Seneca Ridge Middle | 58 |
| 8. | Rolling Ridge Elementary | 58 |
| 9. | Guilford Elementary | 58 |
| 10. | Potowmack Elementary | 57 |
| 11. | Sugarland Elementary | 57 |
| 12. | Meadowland Elementary | 57 |
| 13. | Sully Elementary | 55 |
| 14. | Sterling Elementary | 54 |
| 15. | Countryside Elementary | 53 |
| 16. | Elaine E. Thompson Elementary | 50 |
| 17. | Horizon Elementary | 49 |
| 18. | Dominion High | 45 |
| 19. | Park View High | 42 |
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.
W.O. Robey High has the highest Resource Investment Index among the Sterling schools in this federal-data comparison at 74/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.
Sterling has 19 public schools with a total enrollment of 12,760 students. Average student-teacher ratio: 11.1:1.
Side-by-side: Compare any two schools or districts in Virginia →
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.
