Education Facts and Statistics

Updated: February 2, 2026

For the 2023-2024 school year, the Montana Office of Public Instruction (OPI) reports that public schools enrolled 148,585 K-12 students, a decrease of about 1.3% (1,988 students) from the previous year. There are just under 400 public school districts and about 680 public schools statewide (elementary, middle, high school, and K-12 combined), reflecting Montana's many small, rural communities as well as its larger city systems.

School sizes remain highly variable. A large share of Montana's schools still enroll fewer than 100 students, while a much smaller number-mainly in cities like Billings, Missoula, Great Falls, Bozeman, and Kalispell-have 500 or more students. This pattern continues the tradition noted in earlier years, with many very small schools and a few large ones.

In 2023-2024, public schools served 148,585 students, and non-public options (private schools plus home school) served 17,108 students-about 10% of all K-12 learners in the state. Non-public enrollment increased by roughly 2.4% from the previous year, while public enrollment dipped slightly.

Montana's student-teacher ratio in public schools is about 13.7 students per teacher, based on recent federal data, compared with a national public-school average of about 14.7 students per teacher. This means Montana generally offers slightly smaller classes than the U.S. average.

Montana's college-entrance test scores remain strong among the students who choose to take them. For the class of 2023, Montana SAT takers (a small group-about 5% of graduates) earned a mean score of 1,043, with an average of 537 in Evidence-Based Reading and Writing and 506 in Math, both above the national SAT averages for that year. On the ACT, Montana's recent average composite score is around 19.5, close to or slightly above the national average among states where the test is widely taken.

Visit the Montana Office of Public Instruction for more information.

Updated: February 2, 2026