Enrollment is up in NC private schools but down in homeschooling. What it means
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- Private school enrollment rose by 8,260 students to 143,998 in 2025-26.
- Homeschool enrollment fell 7.5% to 152,897 students in the 2025-26 school year.
- Voucher growth coincided with a 13.2% rise in private schools.
North Carolina’s private schools saw one of their biggest enrollment gains in recent years at the same time homeschool enrollment dropped sharply.
New figures released this month by the state Division of Non-Public Education show 143,998 students were enrolled in private schools during the 2025-26 school year — a 6.1% increase from the prior year.
But DNPE also estimated that homeschool enrollment had dropped 7.5% in the 2025-27 school year to 152,897 students statewide.
Both figures occurred at the same time that the state’s private school voucher program continued to see big increases.
It’s uncertain how much the expansion of the Opportunity Scholarship program — which provides money to help families cover private school costs — may have impacted homeschooling totals.
“There are people who were homeschooling because they couldn’t afford private school, and therefore when the Opportunity Scholarship became available, they went into private school,” Matthew McDill, executive director of North Carolinians for Home Education, said in an interview Wednesday. “So that’s definitely a factor. I just don’t know how much.”
But McDill attributed more of the enrollment drop to DNPE removing inactive homeschools from its records.
“A lot of families will open their homeschool, and then they will fail to close it,” McDill said. “We all realize that the numbers were inflated because people weren’t closing their homeschool. So over the last year or so, they’ve been trying to contact everybody who was listed, and they’ve been kind of deactivating a lot of schools because people have not been responding.”
Private schools growing since voucher era
Private school enrollment had been on the decline in North Carolina until the 2014-15 school year. That was also the first year of the Opportunity Scholarship program.
In 2024, state lawmakers opened the Opportunity Scholarship program to all families.
Over the past two years, private school enrollment has increased 9.7% while voucher enrollment has tripled in size.
Most of the voucher expansion has come from existing private school families becoming eligible. But the state Department of Public Instruction says 12,252 students have left public schools in the past two years using Opportunity Scholarships.
Nearly three-quarters of the state’s private school students are getting a voucher.
Overall, the state saw an increase in private school enrollment of 8,260 students during the 2025-26 school year. That’s the highest increase since the 2022-23 school year.
In contrast, enrollment in traditional public schools dropped during the 2025-26 school year.
More private schools opening, expanding
The expansion of the voucher school program has coincided with a jump in the number of private schools. DNPE reported there are now 997 private schools statewide — a 13.2% increase over the past two years. More than 70% of private schools accept Opportunity Scholarships.
“People are taking advantage of this money from the state to open schools,” said Heather Koons, director of research and communications for Public Schools First NC, a group opposed to the expansion of the voucher program.
Some private schools have announced expansion plans over the past two years. Bob Luebke, director of the John Locke Foundation’s Center for Effective Education, said a survey done by the group found that the average private school was at 79% capacity, so there’s room for more growth.
But, citing factors such as declining birth rates, Luebke said he expects growth in private schools to slow down over time.
“There’s pent-up demand here now, and the numbers will not be the same five, six years from now,” Luebke said in an interview. “I think there’ll be a kind of a moderating tendency.”
