New Report Examines the Gender Makeup of Private Schools in the United States

A new report from the U.S. Department of Education offers a detailed look at private K-12 schools in the United States, enrollments at these schools and faculty members at these institutions.

During the 2017-18 academic year, there were more than 32,000 private schools operating in the United States. About two thirds of these were affiliated with a religious group. Overall, there were nearly 4.9 millions students in these schools and they employed more than 482,000 teachers.

The report includes some information on private schools enrollments by gender. Overall boys accounted for 51.4 percent of all private school students in the 2017-18 academic year. Only 2 percent of private school students attended all-girl schools and 2.4 percent attended all-boy schools.

While girls accounted for less than half of all students at private schools overall, they were 55 percent of the students in early childhood education or pre-schools. Girls were also a significant majority of the students attending vocational or technical K-12 schools. More than two thirds of all students at schools that served special education students were boys.

The full report, Characteristics of Private Schools in the United States: Results From the 2017–18 Private School Universe Survey, may be downloaded by clicking here.