Immigrant Children and School Choice: Immigrant and Native Enrollment in Private and Public Education

Several states have reformed their educational systems in the face of increased dissatisfaction with public education during and after the COVID-19 pandemic school closures, a desire for parents and children to have more choice, and other sources of dissatisfaction. Many of those reforms have increased school choice by creating or expanding education savings accounts, tax credit scholarships, or other reforms. Some commentators and politicians claim that immigrant access to school choice programs are reasons to oppose them--especially when the students or their parents are illegal immigrants.1 Based on data from the American Community Survey (ACS), we find that 9 percent of immigrants enrolled in K-12 education were in private schools during the 2015-2022 period, compared to 16.3 percent of native- born American students. Private school enrollment rises to 11.2 percent in the second generation and to 17.8 percent in the third- plus generation. This result holds for all household income brackets, with some variation. We also compare immigrant and native- born American enrollment in private and public schools based on the number of children in the household, parental education, race, national origin, and state of residency.