School & District Management

Private School Enrollment Is on the Rise. What’s Going On?

By Mark Lieberman & Maya Riser-Kositsky — July 24, 2024 4 min read
School Bus on american country road in the morning.
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

The share of America’s school-age children attending public schools ticked slightly downward every year from 2014 to 2022—just before a wave of new universal private school choice programs began to further complicate the K-12 landscape. But public schools continue to enroll the overwhelming majority of America’s young people.

That’s the takeaway from an Education Week analysis of U.S. Census Bureau survey data breaking down K-12 enrollment by type of school. These data are publicly available but haven’t been widely circulated in a digestible format until now.

The percentage of students in public and private schools didn’t change dramatically throughout the 2010s and early 2020s. But public schools lost a bit of ground during that period, while private schools gained some.

See Also

Illustration of the side view of a man sitting in an office chair with his head down and with a red arrow heading downward toward him while various sized white arrows in the background are all heading upward.
DigitalVision Vectors

In 2022, the most recent year for which Census data were available, 84 percent of the 54 million U.S. children ages 5 to 17 attended public schools, which include traditional public schools as well as charter schools. Another 11.8 percent attended private schools.

The remainder is listed as attending neither, and could have dropped out of school, not started attending school yet, or participated in homeschooling, for which data collection is inconsistent state to state.

Those figures represent a small but notable shift that’s taken place in recent years. A decade earlier, in 2012, the share of public school students was 86.3 percent, and the share of private school students was 10.6 percent.

The trend isn’t particularly surprising to Chris Lubienski, a professor of education policy at Indiana University. What surprised him, instead, was that the drop in the share of children attending public schools wasn’t steeper as the private school choice movement grew throughout the 2010s.

“We have a whole industry of advocacy groups promoting private school choice and attacking the viability of public schools, strongly and falsely suggesting to parents that public schools as a whole are failing,” Lubienski said. “Given that, if anything, one might expect to see more of a hit to public schools.”

Here are a few additional takeaways from these numbers.

Data showing the impact of private school choice are still emerging

Whether private schools will gain a bigger enrollment share in the coming years remains to be seen. Twelve states now offer or will soon roll out some form of universally accessible private school choice, including education savings accounts, vouchers, and tax-credit scholarships—all of which allow parents to spend public funds on private educational options of their choosing.

Recently available data from private school choice programs with expanding eligibility show that the majority of recipients were already attending private schools before taking advantage—which means their participation won’t affect the share of students attending public or private schools.

But that could change as eligibility expands. More than 1 million students accessed a state-funded private school choice offering in 2024, according to figures recently published by EdChoice, the leading advocacy organization for private school choice. Just five years earlier, the number was less than half a million, according to the organization.

Arizona, soon to enter its second school year with a universally accessible education savings account offering, is currently confronting a budget crisis as a result of 75,000 students getting ESA funds, exceeding some early estimates. Those numbers appear poised to grow in Arizona and other states that have followed Arizona’s lead in opening their private school choice programs to virtually all students.

The number of school-age children has grown—but that will change

The total number of children ages 5 to 17 fluctuated throughout the time period for which Census data are available. Between 2010 and 2022, the total number increased slightly, from 53.8 million in 2012 to 54.2 million in 2022.

Demographics experts and federal statisticians, however, anticipate those numbers will drop sharply in the coming years because recent generations of young adults are having fewer children than their parents and grandparents.

The pandemic appears to have accelerated pre-existing trends

Until 2020, the percentage of students attending public schools never dropped by more than one-fifth of 1 percent from one year to the next. But starting in 2020, the drops were slightly steeper: 1.1 percent from 2019 to 2020, 0.7 percent from 2020 to 2021, and 0.5 percent from 2021 to 2022.

The rate of growth for the share of students attending private schools was slightly faster during the same period. Prior to the pandemic, it had never grown more than 0.86 percent from one year to the next.

But from 2019 to 2020, the share of students attending private schools grew by 3.4 percent. From 2020 to 2021, it grew by 5.9 percent. And from 2021 to 2022, it grew by another 1.8 percent.

A growing percentage of children is unaccounted for in recent years

Prior to the pandemic, roughly 97 percent of children ages 5 to 17 were attending public or private schools. That percentage dropped in each of the three most recent years for which data are available.

In 2022, 95.9 percent of children ages 5 to 17 were attending public or private schools. That translates to 43,000 fewer students than in 2019.

Those numbers may be changing for a wide variety of reasons. Homeschool enrollment has grown considerably during the same period. Some students have skipped kindergarten. And some students have disappeared from the data altogether, according to research from Thomas Dee, an economist and education professor from Stanford University.

Related Tags:

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Recruitment & Retention Webinar
Substitute Teacher Staffing Simplified: 5 Strategies for Success
Struggling to find quality substitute teachers? Join our webinar to learn key strategies to keep your classrooms covered and students learning.
Content provided by Kelly Education
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Artificial Intelligence Webinar
AI in Education: Empowering Educators to Tap into the Promise and Steer Clear of Peril
Explore the transformative potential of AI in education and learn how to harness its power to improve student outcomes.
Content provided by Panorama Education
English Learners Webinar Family and Community Engagement: Best Practices for English Learners
Strengthening the bond between schools and families is key to the success of English learners. Learn how to enhance family engagement and support student achievement.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School & District Management Spooked by Halloween, Some Schools Ban Costumes—But Not Without Pushback
Schools are tweaking Halloween traditions to make them more inclusive to all students.
4 min read
A group of elementary school kids sitting on a curb dressed in their Halloween costumes.
iStock/Getty
School & District Management Schools Take a $3 Billion Hit From the Culture Wars. Here’s How It Breaks Down
Culturally divisive conflicts in schools have led to increased legal and security costs, as well as staff time spent on the fallout.
4 min read
Illustration of a businessman with his hands on his head while he watches dollars being sucked down into a dark hole.
DigitalVision Vectors
School & District Management Opinion The Blind Spot More Educators Need to Recognize
A simple activity in a training session caused a chain reaction that strengthened an educator's leadership for decades to come.
5 min read
Screen Shot 2024 10 29 at 9.19.10 AM
Canva
School & District Management Opinion 9 Ways Schools Can Improve Life for Teachers and Students
Educators suggest low-cost strategies to improve the education experience for teachers and learners alike.
8 min read
Conceptual illustration of classroom conversations and fragmented education elements coming together to form a cohesive picture of a book of classroom knowledge.
Sonia Pulido for Education Week