Why private school enrollment trends deserve attention
Private schools have long represented a meaningful share of the U.S. education landscape, offering families alternatives that may differ from local public options in academics, extracurriculars, religious instruction, and school characteristics such as class size and student-teacher ratios. When private school enrollment changes, the effects can ripple outward—touching staffing models, program availability, transportation, and even how communities plan student services.
A 2013 U.S. Census Bureau working paper by Stephanie Ewert, The Decline in Private School Enrollment, examines an important question: is the reported decline in private school enrollment “real,” or could it be an artifact of how different surveys collect and classify enrollment data? The paper’s central contribution is that it compares multiple major datasets, explores subgroup patterns, and evaluates plausible explanations—including affordability pressures, charter school growth, and homeschooling.
What the report set out to answer
The working paper frames several practical research questions that are still relevant for education leaders today:
- Is the decline visible across different data systems, or only within one survey?
- Does the trend hold across socio-demographic subgroups (sex, race, Hispanic origin)?
- Is the decline concentrated in certain types of private schools (religious affiliation, school size, school level, geography)?
- What forces might be contributing—economic stress, charter schools, or homeschooling?
The data sources: why triangulation matters
One reason this paper is widely useful is its use of multiple datasets—each with different strengths:
- American Community Survey (ACS): Large annual sample (about 3 million addresses per year) with strong geographic detail. It asks whether respondents were enrolled in school in the prior three months and whether the school was public or private. Notably, the ACS clarified in 2008 that homeschooled children should be included in the private school category—an important measurement detail when interpreting trends.
- Current Population Survey (CPS): Long-running time series with an October education supplement collected since 1956, enabling long-term trend analysis.
- Private School Universe Survey (PSS): A National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) survey conducted biennially, designed specifically to measure private school counts, enrollment, staffing, and school characteristics (including typology such as Catholic, other religious, and nonsectarian).
By comparing results across these sources, the paper reduces the risk that a single survey’s wording, sampling, or classification rules could be mistaken for a real-world trend.
Core finding: the decline is real, and it begins in the early 2000s
Across the PSS and CPS, private school enrollment rose steadily from 1990 through roughly 2001. After 2002, both datasets show a clear decline. The report highlights several benchmark figures:
- PSS: About 5.3 million K–12 private school students in 2001–2002, falling to about 4.7 million in 2009–2010.
- CPS: About 5.4 million private school students in 2002, declining to about 4.5 million in 2010.
- ACS: Shows an increase through 2008 (the year homeschool classification was clarified), followed by a decline afterward. The share of K–12 students in private school fell from 10.7% (2005) to 10.0% (2010).
The key interpretation is straightforward: because the decline appears across multiple independent systems, it is best understood as an actual enrollment shift rather than a quirk of one dataset.
Do subgroup patterns tell a different story?
The paper examines enrollment by sex, race, and Hispanic origin to test whether the decline is isolated to certain groups.
- Sex: Male and female trends track closely with the overall pattern—both show declines in recent years.
- Non-Hispanic White students: The decline for this group mirrors the overall decline across datasets.
- Black and Asian students: The paper reports fluctuations and no clear consistent pattern across datasets.
- Hispanic students: ACS data suggest private school enrollment may have increased for Hispanic students in recent years, potentially reflecting complex local dynamics (the paper references prior research on “Latino flight” as one possible lens).
A practical takeaway for education leaders is that “the private school decline” is not necessarily uniform across all communities. Local enrollment planning—especially for specialized services—benefits from examining subgroup and neighborhood patterns rather than relying only on national averages.
Which private schools were most affected?
Using PSS detail, the report explores whether the decline is concentrated among certain private school types. From 2005 to 2009, the decline appears across elementary and secondary levels, and it is especially concentrated among:
- Religiously affiliated schools: Catholic and other religious private schools show declines, while nonsectarian schools show a small increase that is not statistically significant.
- Larger schools: Enrollment declines occur in most size categories, while the smallest schools (under 50 students) show an increase. The report notes an important ambiguity: this could reflect growth in small schools, or it could reflect larger schools shrinking into smaller-size classifications.
- Non-rural settings: Declines are observed in cities, suburbs, and towns, while rural areas show a small increase that is not statistically significant.
These patterns align with broader narratives about the pressures facing tuition-dependent schools in competitive metro markets, particularly those with religious affiliations and larger fixed-cost footprints.
Testing explanations: affordability, homeschooling, and charter schools
1) Did the Great Recession cause the decline?
The paper considers whether the recession beginning in December 2007 made private school tuition unaffordable for more families. While this is plausible at the household level, the timing matters: the decline begins earlier in the decade, suggesting the recession did not start the trend. The recession may have accelerated it, but the long-run CPS trend (1955–2011) shows that private school share does not consistently rise and fall in sync with recessions, implying that enrollment decisions may be more “sticky” and long-term than annual budget shifts.
2) Did homeschooling growth draw students away from private schools?
The report explores homeschooling as a potential substitute for private schooling, especially for families seeking an alternative to traditional public school. Using limited state-level homeschool data (which the paper notes are difficult to collect comprehensively), the analysis finds only weak correlations between changes in homeschooling and private school enrollment. In other words, homeschooling may contribute in some places, but the evidence in this paper is not strong enough to treat it as a primary driver nationally.
3) Did charter school growth contribute to the decline?
The strongest evidence in the paper supports a relationship between charter school expansion and declining private school enrollment. Charter schools—publicly funded but often more flexible in program design—grew substantially in many states during the period examined. State-by-state comparisons show a common pattern: charter enrollment rises while private enrollment falls.
To quantify this, the paper reports negative correlation coefficients between state-level changes in charter and private enrollment:
- -0.40 from 2008 to 2009
- -0.59 from 2009 to 2010
Even when large states are removed in sensitivity checks, the negative association remains. Importantly, correlation is not definitive proof of causation, but the findings are consistent with other research cited in the paper indicating charter growth can reduce private enrollment—particularly at the elementary level and for Catholic schools.
What this means for schools planning student support services
Enrollment shifts—whether from private to charter, private to traditional public, or other pathways—change the composition of student needs across systems. When more students enter publicly funded settings, districts and charter networks may experience increased demand for:
- Special education and related services capacity
- Speech-language support, occupational therapy, and mental health services
- Consistent service delivery across geographically dispersed schools
- Staffing models that can flex with enrollment volatility
For education leaders, the operational question is not only “Where are students enrolling?” but also “How quickly can we scale services to match shifting demand?” For providers like TinyEYE, these trends underscore why schools increasingly value service models that can expand access efficiently—especially when staffing pipelines are tight and enrollment patterns are changing year to year.
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