Where our data comes from

School facts: the federal survey

Grades, enrollment, teacher counts, students per teacher, affiliation, program type and location come from the U.S. Department of Education’s Private School Universe Survey for 2023-24, which was published in July 2026. Schools fill it in themselves. It is the newest national data there is, and it is already two school years old. That is why every school page tells you to ask the school for current numbers.

NCES, Private School Universe Survey data files

Where a state publishes a newer count for every private school, enrollment comes from it instead. California schools carry the 2025-26 figure from the private school affidavit each school files with the California Department of Education. Wisconsin schools carry the Department of Public Instruction’s certified count for September 2025, and Wisconsin pages also show how many of a school’s students use each Choice program and the Special Needs Scholarship that fall. We match these files to our schools by name and town (county in California) and leave a school out when the figures do not fit. Teacher counts and the other facts still come from the federal survey.

California Department of Education, private school data · Wisconsin DPI, data files · Wisconsin DPI, Choice data and reports

Some schools opened after the federal survey or were missed by it. We add them from state records when a person has checked each one against our list: the California affidavit file, the Washington State Board of Education’s approved list, the Louisiana board’s approved list and the Missouri scholarship organizations’ partner lists. The street comes from the list or the school’s own website, and the school must have a Google profile in the right place before its page goes live. These records are not program lists, so they never add a badge.

Washington SBE, private schools · Louisiana DOE, nonpublic schools · Missouri State Treasurer, MOScholars organizations

Michigan and Pennsylvania keep directories of their nonpublic schools (Michigan’s Educational Entity Master, kept by the Center for Educational Performance and Information, and Pennsylvania’s EdNA). We read exports of both made on October 9, 2026. A school page we match to one says the directory lists the school as open, with its date (and, in Michigan, the grades it lists this year). A school in either directory that is open, has a street address and is not already on our map is added only when we find its Google profile (the same name in the same town or ZIP, or the same phone); Pennsylvania rows come only from the directory’s “Nonpublic, Non-Licensed School” category, because its licensed category also holds preschools and treatment programs. A directory is not an approval or a program list, so it never adds a badge.

Michigan CEPI, Educational Entity Master · Pennsylvania EdNA, extracts

Program participation: only what a state publishes

We mark a school as taking part in a program only when it is on a list the state itself puts out for download. We match each list entry to a school by name and city (or county, where the list gives only a county). Some entries are matched another way: by the same phone number or street address when the two names are written differently, or by a school name that appears only once in the state. We show the list’s date and link to it. Where a state has no list we can check, the page says so. We would rather leave a badge off than guess.

What the lists add up to: the share of private schools on each state’s list, counties where no private school takes part, and the share of Florida and Ohio private schools taking the scholarship.

What schools charge: published tuition by state and grade, each figure linked to the school’s own page.

How that compares: private tuition next to public school spending per pupil from the U.S. Census Bureau and each state’s award.

Some schools on a state list never answered the federal survey. We list those too, with the address and phone from their Google profile, and we leave the enrollment figures blank because we do not have them.

Is it still open? The school’s Google profile

A 2023-24 survey includes schools that have since closed. We check each school against its Google Business Profile, take the website from there, and drop schools Google reports as permanently closed. That check runs again on a rolling schedule, a few hundred schools a night.

Public charter schools: a separate list

Charter school pages come from the U.S. Department of Education’s Common Core of Data: the 2025-26 public school directory (preliminary) for each open charter school’s address, phone, website, grades and authorizer, the 2024-25 membership and staff files for students and teachers, and the NCES EDGE file for locations. Charter schools are public and charge no tuition, so they are never counted, badged or listed with the private schools on this site. A charter school page is offered to search engines only when the directory gives both a phone number and a website.

How we check ourselves

A script re-reads every state list each week and reports schools that were added or dropped. It confirms every source link on the program pages still loads, flags any program facts we have not reviewed in 45 days, and spot-checks school websites. Anything it finds goes to a person.

What we will not do

We do not copy data out of program administrators’ vendor apps, because their terms do not allow automated access. We rely on lists a state publishes or releases under public records law. We do not sell placement. And we do not publish a school’s tuition until we can point to where the number came from.

See a mistake? Send a correction. It is free and a person reads it.

How often we re-read our sources

We keep a register of every official source this site uses, with a planned re-read for each. As of November 3, 2026 it holds 80 sources in use: 12 read weekly, 25 read monthly, 17 read quarterly and 21 read once a year, and 5 with no set schedule yet. 73 were read in the 30 days before that; the oldest read is from January 23, 2026.

The register flags a source when a read fails, when it suddenly loses more than 15% of its rows, or when it falls twice as late as planned, and every flag goes on a weekly review list. Separately, once a month every quoted fact behind our guides, rules, fees and prices is read again on its source page, and every outbound link on the site is checked.

What the labels mean

✓ Program name

The school is on that program's official list of participating schools: the state's own list, or in South Dakota the partner list of the program's one registered scholarship organization. The badge shows only while that list was checked within the last 30 days.

Grades, students, students per teacher

From the 2023-24 federal Private School Universe Survey, unless the page names a newer state file.

Tuition

Read on the school's own website or in an official state file, shown with the date and a link to where it came from.

Charter school

A public school from the federal Common Core of Data. It charges no tuition and is never counted or badged with the private schools.

Limits

• The federal private school survey is the newest edition there is (2023-24). Enrollment, grades and even whether a school is open can change after it.
• A badge means the school is on a program's list. It does not mean a child qualifies, that a seat is open or what the award will be.
• Program lists change during the year, and a school can join or leave between our reads.
• Some programs publish no school list (Pennsylvania's EITC is one), so their schools carry no badge.

Found something wrong? See corrections for how to tell us and what we have fixed.