Increasingly, Catholic elementary schools serve affluent students. After the widespread closures of Catholic schools, which had relatively low tuitions and were concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest, the number of Catholic elementary schools in the U.S. declined by 37 percent between 1970 and 2010. The Catholic elementary schools that remain open are more expensive, with an average tuition in 2010 of $5,858 (in 2015 dollars), which is more than six times the average tuition of $873 in Catholic elementary schools in 1970. To learn more about who goes to private school and how much it costs, read “Who Goes to Private School?” from the Fall 2018 edition of Education Next.
—Education Next
