As Texas lawmakers debate using taxpayer money to help families pay for private school, the question emerges: how much does attending private school in Texas actually cost?
The latest proposals for education savings accounts (ESAs) in Texas suggest spending between $8,000 and $10,500Â in taxpayer money per student. Such funds may be applied to private school tuition or other education-related expenses like the costs associated with homeschooling.
Gov. Greg Abbott suggested he would continue to call special sessions until an education bill including a school choice component appears on his desk to sign.
Diving into the costs of private education in Texas helps to show the extent to which ESAs might provide financial relief for families that want their children to attend private school.
For those in favor of school choice, it could help grant access to lower- or middle-income families wishing for their children to attend a private institution, alongside scholarships and financial aid options. For those against it, ESAs might predominantly benefit those already financially equipped to enroll their children in private schools, leaving those who are not out in the cold.
Currently, Texas has around 5.4 million students enrolled in public schools and approximately 290,000 in private institutions, according to Laura Colangelo, executive director of the Texas Private Schools Association, per The Dallas Morning News.
The average tuition fee for private institutions across the Lone Star State stood just below $11,000 for the 2023-2024 school year, according to the Private School Review.
Here are some tuition rates logged at North Texas private schools this school year:
- All Saints’ Episcopal School — Tuition ranges from about $6,000 to $27,500, with need-based financial aid and merit-based scholarships available.
- Bishop Dunne Catholic School — High school tuition is approximately $17,000, with personalized rates for other grades based on family income.
- Bishop Lynch High School — Tuition is about $22,000, with financial aid options.
- Cristo Rey Dallas College Prep — Family contribution varies from $600 to $3,000 annually, with students earning a significant portion of their tuition through work-study programs.
- Episcopal School of Dallas — Tuition spans approximately $27,400 to $37,900, with significant tuition assistance available.
Elementary schools typically charge lower annual fees, which steadily increase as students progress to high school.
For instance, as previously reported by The Dallas Express, Niche, an education information website, recently named the Greenhill School in Addison the best private elementary school and high school in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, behind the top-rated all-boys institution St. Mark’s School of Texas. The co-ed school costs range from $30,480 a year for Pre-K to approximately $38,050 by senior year.
Meanwhile, at St. Mark’s, tuition tops out at approximately $35,821 a year, with 14% of students receiving financial aid of an average amount of $21,115.
Yet specialized institutions catering to special education tend to have considerably higher costs, averaging over $19,000 in tuition fees in the 2023-2024 school year, according to the Private School Review. There are 63 special education private schools in the state, serving approximately 4,510 students.
It is worth noting that public school systems have struggled to cope with the rising demand for special education services after lawmakers did away with the cap on enrollment in 2017, as previously covered by The Dallas Express. In the 2020-2021 school year, 604,973 students in Texas were enrolled in special education, seeing a 37% increase since 2013, according to the Texas Education Agency.
