Largest Public Schools in Chicago, IL
The largest public schools located in Chicago, Illinois, ranked by enrollment in the 2023–24 NCES Common Core of Data, with lunch-eligibility figures for each campus.
Public schools physically located in Chicago enrolled 326,398 students in the 2023–24 school year across 653 campuses with reported enrollment. City pages answer a different question from district pages: a district is a governing agency that can span many cities, while this page groups individual campuses by the city in their CCD location address. The distinction matters in metros like Chicago, where one district may run most campuses but charter and neighboring-district schools also sit inside city limits. Every figure here is a campus figure from the school-level CCD files, labeled 2023–24.
The 15 largest schools in Chicago
| # | School | District / agency | Level | Enrollment 2023–24 | Free/reduced lunch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lane Technical High School | Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 | High | 4,525 | 37% |
| 2 | Taft High School | Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 | High | 4,416 | 54% |
| 3 | Curie Metropolitan High School | Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 | High | 3,136 | 87% |
| 4 | Kenwood Academy High School | Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 | High | 2,337 | 57% |
| 5 | Young Magnet High School | Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 | High | 2,221 | 35% |
| 6 | Lincoln Park High School | Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 | High | 2,125 | 41% |
| 7 | Jones College Prep High School | Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 | High | 1,973 | 41% |
| 8 | Thomas Kelly College Preparatory | Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 | High | 1,862 | 95% |
| 9 | Hubbard High School | Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 | High | 1,792 | 93% |
| 10 | Mather High School | Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 | High | 1,777 | 81% |
| 11 | Kennedy High School | Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 | High | 1,695 | 67% |
| 12 | Von Steuben Metro Science HS | Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 | High | 1,695 | 61% |
| 13 | Juarez Community Academy HS | Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 | High | 1,587 | 88% |
| 14 | Amundsen High School | Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 | High | 1,585 | 41% |
| 15 | Washington G High School | Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 | High | 1,553 | 85% |
The largest campus, Lane Technical High School, enrolled 4,525 students — 1.4% of all students in schools located in the city. Large comprehensive high schools dominate the top of most city rankings because elementary schools are deliberately kept small and neighborhood-based, while high schools consolidate whole districts into a few campuses. Where a very large campus is a virtual or alternative school, its CCD school type says so in the source file, and readers should weigh that before comparing it with a traditional campus.
Reading the lunch-eligibility column
Across the 15 largest Chicago campuses that reported lunch counts, 61.3% of students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch in 2023–24.
Eligibility is a family-income measure collected through the National School Lunch Program and reported to NCES by each school. Campuses marked n/r did not report a usable count — in some cases because the school serves all meals free under the Community Eligibility Provision and reports through a different route. The column is therefore best read campus by campus, and the aggregate above is computed only over reporting campuses, which the text states openly rather than burying in a footnote.
How city totals relate to district totals
If you add the campuses here, the sum will not match any single district’s enrollment, and it is not supposed to: district totals count every student a district serves wherever the campus sits, while this page counts every student in campuses located in Chicago whichever district runs them. For agency-level figures — staffing, spending and diplomas — use the district pages in the district index or the Illinois state pages for statewide totals. Both views come from the same 2023–24 CCD files; they simply group the same schools two different ways.
Frequently asked questions
What is the largest public school in Chicago?
Lane Technical High School is the largest public school located in Chicago, Illinois, with 4,525 students in the 2023–24 NCES CCD School Membership file.
How many public school students are in Chicago?
Schools located within Chicago city limits enroll 326,398 students in total in 2023–24; the 15 largest campuses listed here account for 34,279 of them. City limits are not district boundaries, so this is a campus-location total, not a district total.
Data: National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data and EDFacts, retrieved October 2026, from nces.ed.gov. Enrollment, staffing and lunch figures are for the 2023–24 school year; finance figures are fiscal year 2024 (school year 2023–24) unless a page labels them otherwise.
Disclaimer: Public School Stats republishes official federal statistics for general information only. Figures are reported as published by NCES and EDFacts and may include imputed or revised values; for decisions affecting a specific school or district, confirm the figure with the district or the NCES source file. See our full Disclaimer.