Largest Public Schools in Detroit, MI
The largest public schools located in Detroit, Michigan, ranked by enrollment in the 2023–24 NCES Common Core of Data, with lunch-eligibility figures for each campus.
Public schools physically located in Detroit enrolled 79,990 students in the 2023–24 school year across 185 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 Detroit, 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 Detroit
| # | School | District / agency | Level | Enrollment 2023–24 | Free/reduced lunch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cass Technical High School | Detroit Public Schools Community District | High | 2,485 | 61% |
| 2 | Western International High School | Detroit Public Schools Community District | High | 1,931 | 76% |
| 3 | Renaissance High School | Detroit Public Schools Community District | High | 1,171 | 54% |
| 4 | Munger ElementaryMiddle School | Detroit Public Schools Community District | Elementary | 933 | 78% |
| 5 | Detroit Service Learning Academy Campus | Detroit Service Learning Academy | Elementary | 919 | 100% |
| 6 | Earhart ElementaryMiddle School | Detroit Public Schools Community District | Elementary | 899 | 82% |
| 7 | University Preparatory Art Design MiddleHigh | University Preparatory Art & Design | High | 882 | 77% |
| 8 | Mackenzie ElementaryMiddle School | Detroit Public Schools Community District | Elementary | 879 | 89% |
| 9 | Ronald Brown Academy | Detroit Public Schools Community District | Elementary | 874 | 90% |
| 10 | Detroit Edison Public School Academy | Detroit Edison Public School Academy | Elementary | 855 | 76% |
| 11 | Mumford High School | Detroit Public Schools Community District | High | 852 | 85% |
| 12 | John R King Academic and Performing Arts Academy | Detroit Public Schools Community District | Elementary | 845 | 92% |
| 13 | Academy of The Americas High School | Detroit Public Schools Community District | Other | 813 | 74% |
| 14 | Martin Luther King Jr Senior High School | Detroit Public Schools Community District | High | 808 | 73% |
| 15 | Gompers ElementaryMiddle School | Detroit Public Schools Community District | Elementary | 807 | 91% |
The largest campus, Cass Technical High School, enrolled 2,485 students — 3.1% 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 Detroit campuses that reported lunch counts, 77.3% 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 Detroit whichever district runs them. For agency-level figures — staffing, spending and diplomas — use the district pages in the district index or the Michigan 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 Detroit?
Cass Technical High School is the largest public school located in Detroit, Michigan, with 2,485 students in the 2023–24 NCES CCD School Membership file.
How many public school students are in Detroit?
Schools located within Detroit city limits enroll 79,990 students in total in 2023–24; the 15 largest campuses listed here account for 15,953 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.