education
Private school enrollment
Why this matters
This measure shows how families choose between public and private schools. It reports the share of enrolled students who attend private, non-public schools rather than public ones. It offers useful context for conversations about school choice and public-school investment.
Nationally, private schools enroll a minority of students, but the share varies widely from place to place. Where it is high, it can reflect strong religious-school traditions, family income, or how confident families feel in nearby public schools.
The number does not say one type of school is better. Because public schools serve most students and a more economically mixed population, watching private enrollment alongside public investment can highlight questions of access and fairness.
In Charlotte, these patterns sit on a notable history. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools was once a national model for busing-based integration under the Swann ruling; after that order ended and CMS returned to neighborhood schools in 2002, schools resegregated along residential lines. Peer-reviewed research (Billings, Deming & Rockoff, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2014) tied that resegregation to widened Black–White achievement gaps, one documented driver of the region’s mobility challenge. The pattern reflects where families live and past policy choices, not the worth of any school or family.
About the Charlotte region
This explorer covers the 14-county, two-state Charlotte region (11 North Carolina and 3 South Carolina counties). Many of these indicators connect to a defining regional story: a landmark Harvard study ranked Charlotte last, 50th of the 50 largest U.S. metros for economic mobility (a child raised in the poorest fifth had about a 4.4% chance of reaching the top fifth), a finding that launched the region's Leading on Opportunity agenda. Updated 2024 data show Charlotte has since climbed to 38th.
Opportunity here is also unevenly mapped. An affluent “wedge” fanning southeast from uptown holds a large majority of the city's wealth on under a quarter of its land, while a ”crescent” to the north, west, and east carries higher poverty, a legacy of redlining, exclusionary zoning, and highway routing that recurs across the race, income, health, tree-canopy, and school maps in this tool. No single indicator is good or bad on its own; together they describe how the region sorted opportunity.
Companion resources: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer · UNC Charlotte Urban Institute · Opportunity Atlas · Methods & sources
Learn more
- NCES — Private School Enrollment nces.ed.gov
Federal data on private K–12 enrollment, including how the share varies by state.
- NCES — Public vs. private schools (Fast Facts) nces.ed.gov
Quick comparison of enrollment and student characteristics across school types.
- EdNC — Charlotte, the Swann decision, and resegregation ednc.org
How CMS moved from busing-based integration to neighborhood schools, and what followed.
About the data
Calculated from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (2014–2024), at the Census-tract level, with margins of error. ACS 5-year vintages overlap year to year, so the series is a rolling estimate; compare only non-overlapping periods.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates.