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Private School Participants in Programs under the No Child Left Behind Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act: Private School and Public School Perspectives.

Statistics About Non-Public Education in the United States

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Private Schools

Schools and Enrollment

Private School Universe Survey 2007-08, Table 1

In the fall of 2007, there were an estimated*

33,740 private elementary and secondary schools, with
5,072,451 students, and
456,266 full-time equivalent (FTE) teachers.

*These estimates include schools for which kindergarten is the highest grade.

**Private Schools by NCES Typology 2007-08**
Catholic	Parochial	Diocesan	Private
7,507	3,378	3,087	1,042
(22.2%)	(10%)	(9.1%)	(3.1%)

Other religious	Conservative Christian	Affiliated	Unaffiliated
15,403	5,106	2,741	7,555
(45.7%)	(15.1%)	(8.1%)	(22.4%)

Nonsectarian	Regular	Special Emphasis	Special Education
10,830	5,603	3,691	1,536
(32.1%)	(16.6%)	(10.9%)	(4.6%)

**Private Schools by School Level 2007-08**
Elementary	Secondary	Combined
21,870	2,932	8,938
(64.8%)	(8.7%)	(26.5%)

**Private School Students by NCES Typology 2007-08**
Catholic	Parochial	Diocesan	Private
2,156,173	872,976	905,101	378,096
(42.5%)	(17.2%)	(17.8%)	(7.5%)

Other religious	Conservative Christian	Affiliated	Unaffiliated
1,930,707	772,951	452,787	704,969
(38.1%)	(15.2%)	(8.9%)	(13.9%)

Nonsectarian	Regular	Special Emphasis	Special Education
985,571	670,057	209,094	106,420
(19.4%)	(13.2%)	(4.1%)	(2.1%)

**Private School Students by School Level 2007-08**
Elementary	Secondary	Combined
2,513,099	826,905	1,732,447
(49.5%)	(16.3%)	(34.2%)

Tuition

Digest of Education Statistics 2008, Chapter 2, Part 1, Table 59

For the 2003-2004 school year, private school tuition* averages were:

$5,049 for elementary schools;
$8,412 for secondary schools; and
$8,302 for combined schools.

* Tuition weighted by the number of students enrolled in schools.

Homeschooling

In the spring of 2007, an estimated 1.5 million students (1,508,000) were homeschooled in the United States. This represents an increase from the estimated 1.1 million students (1,096,000) who were being homeschooled in the spring of 2003. In addition, the estimated percentage of the school-age population that was homeschooled increased from 2.2 percent in 2003 to 2.9 percent in 2007.

Parents give various reasons for the decision to educate their children at home. According to the 2003 and 2007 National Household Education Surveys (NHES), the three reasons selected by parents of more than two-thirds of students were concern about the school environment (88 percent), to provide religious or moral instruction (83 percent), and dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available at other schools (73 percent). In the 2007 NHES, parents were also asked which of their selected reasons for homeschooling was the most important. Thirty-six percent of the parents reported that providing religious or moral instruction was the most important reason for their decision to homeschool, followed by 21 percent reporting concern for the school environment and 17 percent reporting dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available at other schools as the most important reason for homeschooling.

Helpful Links

Institute for Education Sciences (IES)

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)

Resources

U. S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Schools and Staffing Survey, 2003-04, Private School Data Tables