stLouISTProPublica Releases New Private School Demographics Lookup
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Join us Jan. 31 at 3 p.m. Eastern for a live demonstration of this database’s features.
Private schools in the United States are, on the whole, whiter than public schools, with fewer Black, Hispanic or Latino students. This may not be a surprising statistic because private schools can often be expensive and exclusionary, but it’s not a simple one to pin down. There is no central list of private schools in the country, and the only demographic data about them comes from a little-known voluntary survey administered by the federal government.
While reporting our project on Segregation Academies in the South last year, we relied on that survey to find private schools founded during desegregation and analyzed their demographics compared to local public school districts. Our analysis of that survey revealed, among other things, Amite County, Mississippi, where about 900 children attend the local public schools — which, as of 2021, were 16% white. By comparison, the two private schools in the county, with more than 600 children, were 96% white.
In the course of our reporting, we realized that this data and analysis were illuminating and useful — even outside the South. We decided to create a database to allow anyone to look up a school and view years worth of data.
Today, we are releasing the Private School Demographics database. This is the first time anyone has taken past surveys and made them this easy to explore. Moreover, we’ve matched these schools to the surrounding public school districts, enabling parents, researchers and journalists to directly compare the makeup of private schools to local public systems.
Until now, much of this data was difficult to analyze: While the National Center for Education Statistics, which collects the data, provides a tool to view the most recent year of Private School Universe Survey data, there was no easy way to examine historical trends without wrangling large, unwieldy text files.
As debates over school choice, vouchers and privatization of education intensify, making this repository of private school data accessible is more important than ever. The information is self-reported, but we have attempted to flag or correct some obvious inaccuracies wherever possible.
How to Use the AppSearching: You can search for private schools or public school districts by name and drill down on results using several filter options.
For schools, you can filter results by state, religious affiliation, school type and enrollment range. For some schools, you can also filter by founding year. By default, we only show results for schools that have responded to the survey at least once in the last few years, but you can turn off this filter to also include older data in your search results.
For public school districts, users can filter by state and sort results to see where the most students are attending private schools, as well as the gap between the district’s largest racial group and the school’s share of those same students. Because private schools can draw students from different districts, comparing their racial composition to a single district’s public schools is imperfect. Still, these comparisons can offer valuable insights into broader patterns of segregation and access.
Looking up a private school: On each private school’s page, you’ll find basic information about the school (its name; location; the type of school and its religious affiliation, if any; and what grades it teaches), and we’ve also included a summary and visualization of how the school’s demographics compare to the public school district’s.
There’s also a compilation of the demographic data the school provided to the survey, which you can download for your own analysis:
Exploring a district or state: On district and state pages, you’ll find more general information about private schools in those areas. (Search for districts here, and see links for each state here.)
You can find areas where private schools aren’t out of step demographically with their nearby public schools. In Osceola County, Florida, south of Orlando, both the local public school district and the private schools are mostly Hispanic or Latino.
Both state and district pages include breakdowns of private schools by religious orientation and school type, and a list of all private schools in the state or district. State pages also show a list of all school districts in the state.
District pages include some additional features, such as:
- A searchable map of private schools in the district’s boundaries, color coded by the predominant race of each school’s student body. (Use the lookup tool next to the map to search for schools by name, or click on the “Use Your Current Location” button to zoom in on schools near you. Clicking on a school’s address will fly the map to its location, and clicking on a school’s name will take you to that school’s page.)
- An interactive line chart that shows how public and private school enrollment have changed over time for each race category. Use the dropdown to change race categories and explore trends for different groups.
If you find something notable, we’d love to hear about it. We’d also like to hear your ideas for improving the app, including new features or data you’d like to see. And if you spot something you believe is an error, each page has a button you can use to report that to us.
