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Private vs. Public School Enrollment Over Time in California
April 2010
For many years, about 10% of California’s K–12 students enrolled in private schools. However, private school enrollment began to decline in 2001–02 after the economy experienced a downturn due to the dot-com crash. Although the economy recovered before the latest recession, private school enrollment was closer to 8% in 2007–08 and has remained near 8% in 2008–09.
In the meantime, students and their parents looking for alternatives to traditional public schools have been increasingly choosing charter schools, which represented 4.6% of the public school population in 2008–09. The graph below was adapted from EdSource’s Resource Cards.
K-12 Enrollment Over Time
in California
| Private | Charter | Public (noncharter) | Total | |
| 1998-99 | 628,746 | 67,924 | 5,776,187 | 6,472,857 |
| 1999-00 | 640,802 | 99,048 | 5,852,564 | 6,592,414 |
| 2000-01 | 648,564 | 115,390 | 5,935,505 | 6,699,459 |
| 2001-02 | 635,719 | 132,909 | 6,014,466 | 6,783,094 |
| 2002-03 | 609,483 | 156,696 | 6,087,707 | 6,853,886 |
| 2003-04 | 599,605 | 164,808 | 6,133,961 | 6,898,374 |
| 2004-05 | 591,056 | 179,810 | 6,142,357 | 6,913,223 |
| 2005-06 | 594,597 | 199,916 | 6,112,187 | 6,906,700 |
| 2006-07 | 584,983 | 222,942 | 6,064,001 | 6,871,926 |
| 2007-08 | 564,734 | 248,639 | 6,026,830 | 6,840,203 |
| 2008-09 | 536,393 | 284,977 | 5,967,054 | 6,788,424 |
Data: California Department
of Education (CDE), 11/09
EdSource 4/10