(from Quartz) Between 1970 and 2010, the number of private Catholic schools in the U.S. dropped by 37 percent, according to a new study by Education Next. It argues that Catholic private schools — and by extension, private schools in general — have been siloed as the domain of the wealthy.
The share of school-age kids attending private elementary schools peaked after World War II, reaching 15 percent in 1958. That number decreased to 10 percent by the mid-1970s and leveled out to about 9 percent in 2015. In 1965, 89 percent of kids who attended a private elementary school were enrolled in a Catholic school. By 2013, only 42 percent of private school students attended a Catholic school, a development that’s had a disproportionate impact on middle-class students.
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