AUGUST 20, 2014Private school enrollments highest in unlikely spots
(Calif.) Think of the American private school and you might imagine a picturesque campus somewhere on the Eastern seaboard where the boys are all in tweed and the girls wear matching berets.
But, according to new research, the number one metro in the U.S. with the highest percentage of private school enrollment is a lot further south – New Orleans, which reports a full quarter of all its K-12 students attend private institutions.
Honolulu is next at 20.7 percent followed by San Francisco and Baton Rouge at 19 percent. The stereotypical eastern metro doesn’t make the list until number five – Philadelphia, where 18.4 percent of the K-12 students attend private school.
New York? Boston? Baltimore? None made the top 10 as compiled by economist Jed Kolko in a blog posted this week by the San Francisco-based real estate research website, Trulia.
To be clear, when the numbers get sorted by neighborhood, a more traditional pattern emerges – the Upper East Side of Manhattan, for instance, is close to 90 percent private school enrollment; same for the Northwest, Washington D.C., the Greenville section of Wilmington, Del. and the Lakewood neighborhood of New Brunswick, N.J.
“Kids are more likely to attend private school if their family is rich, highly educated, non-Hispanic White, Catholic or orthodox Jew,” Kolko said in his post. “That makes private school attendance much more common in some places than others.”
The analysis was based primarily on Census data but Trulia also contributed with an online, consumer survey conducted in June where 2,029 adults were asked about the most important considerations when choosing a home.
The point of Kolko’s blog was to give prospective real estate buyers some perspective when it came to picking neighborhoods and schools, including private school options.
He emphasized two important findings from the research:
- Just 20 percent of private school students attend non-sectarian schools; the other 80 percent are Private school enrollments highest in unlikely spots :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:
Demise of the school bond means big spike in housing fees
(Calif.) Gov. Jerry Brown's opposition to placing a school facilities bond on the November ballot led a key law maker Tuesday to give up on widely-supported legislation that would've done so. The fallout is likely to be a large increase in the amount of money schools can collect from housing builders to pay for school construction to house new students.