About half a million of California’s students in grades K-12 attend private schools.

Of these students, about four out of five attend a private school affiliated with a church or religion. Private schools without a religious affiliation are often described as independent schools or nonprofit schools.

The right to private education

Parents have the right to send their kids to private schools based on a unanimous 1925 ruling of the US Supreme Court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters:

Enrollment in private schools in California peaked in 2005 at about 600k K-12 students and nearly 9% of enrollment. The private school share of enrollment fell to 7.7% of students in 2011 but rebounded thereafter, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, rising to 8.8% in 2022. Private schools that enroll fewer than six students are considered homeschools and excluded from the chart below. In 2022 about 47k students were enrolled in a homeschool according to affidavits filed with the California Department of Education.

Are private schools better?

Are private schools better than public ones? It's difficult to even hazard a serious guess supported by actual evidence.

Statistics about class sizes, hours of instruction, staffing and the like are not systematically collected from private schools. Simple comparisons of test scores between private schools and public ones show a difference, but this reflects a giant selection bias because kids in private schools tend to have some big life advantages. Private schools also tend to use different tests than public schools, befuddling comparisons. Accounting and tax issues make it seriously difficult even to compare how much money private schools spend in comparison to public ones. A provocative 2018 long-term analysis by Robert C. Pianta and Arya Ansari found no evidence that private schools produce educational results broadly better than public schools when poverty and family characteristics are taken into consideration. (For a deep look at these issues, read Private Schooling in the U.S. by Bruce Bakker of Rutgers University.)

With all that said, just because the data are unclear doesn't necessarily mean there isn't a difference. People who prefer private schools for their children aren't necessarily fools. Many considerations contribute to each individual's school decision.

Tuition is not tax-deductible

In California, as in most states, private school tuition is paid by parents, generally without government support or subsidy. Private school is costly, and tuition is not generally tax-deductible.

Non-tuition donations to private school scholarship funds generally are deductible, however, as private schools are almost universally set up as non-profit organizations. Some private schools refer to themselves as "non-profit schools" to emphasize the point. Private schools depend heavily on donations to support the capital costs of buildings and the like.

Blurred lines and vouchers

Tax-funded voucher programs blur the lines between private and public education by providing parents with credit toward tuition or other costs at a private school. The majority of American private schools have a religious affiliation, so debate about school vouchers frequently overlaps with arguments about separation of church and state. This question has a long history.

In 1875, under the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, James G. Blaine proposed a constitutional ban on public funding of private schools. Fueled in part by a wave of anti-Catholic sentiment, the Blaine Amendment nearly became a part of the US constitution, but it narrowly failed to secure enough support for ratification. However, the separation of church and state in public education was adopted into most state constitutions, including California's.

In the 1950s and 60s, vouchers were a major mechanism for schools in the south to subvert desegregation orders.

Vouchers and the Trump administration

Debate about the use of vouchers to subsidize private schools heated up under the leadership of Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education in the first Trump Administration. She called on states to overturn the Blaine Amendments in their constitutions and to fund religious schools in part or in full through taxes using vouchers and other instruments. In some states, tax-funded vouchers have increasingly subsidized private education. As of 2024, Florida and Arizona had made the biggest changes in this direction.

Arguments against vouchers are succinctly summarized by the Anti-Defamation League. Rebuttals are summarized here by BalancedPolitics.org.

Opening the door for funding religious schools with taxes

In the Ed100 blog
Separation of church and state, shaken: Public funding for private schools.

In 2020, the Supreme Court considered the issue of state aid to religious schools. It held in Espinoza v Montana that once a state decides to provide support to private schools, it cannot deny the same support to religious schools. “A state need not subsidize private education,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the 5-4 majority. “But once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”

In 2022, another ruling by the Supreme Court, Carson v. Makin, further reduced the obstacles to funding private religious schools with public funds. The bench sided 6-3 with a Maine family who challenged a state tuition program that excluded religious private schools.

California's voters have long opposed tax-based funding of private schools, rejecting initiatives in 1993, and again in 2000. Voucher advocates considered trying again to put an initiative on the ballot in 2022 but abandoned the effort.

Research about vouchers

If we set aside concerns about separation of church and state, and we forgive the historical connection between vouchers and segregation, and we decide to be OK with the fact that voucher-like programs tend to subsidize private education for wealthier families, what does research say about the impact on students? Do kids benefit?

The evidence mostly says no. From the perspective of an individual student, more options can be better than fewer options, but the big-picture finding is that subsidies for private schools are bad public policy.

Private school advocates know that the term voucher polls poorly, so it has been replaced with alternatives like choice programs, education savings accounts, or tax-credit scholarships. These all differ subtly in implementation, but with the same general effect. Changing terminology can make things so confusing that even seasoned journalists need help to keep up.

How do private school advocates respond?

In the pro-voucher arena, EdChoice is an important and well-funded advocate. The Wharton School provides voucher pros and cons with earlier state research.

An excellent (but dated) statistical comparison of private schools by their self-described affiliation (Independent, Catholic, Jewish, etc.) is available here from the blog schoolfinance101. If you know of more recent data, please contact us!

The next lesson explores ideas about improving education by incorporating health and other community-based services directly into schools.

Updated December 2024