Blacks Are Underrepresented at Private High Schools That Are the Leading Feeder Institutions to the Nation’s Best Colleges

Blacks are 16 percent of all students in the nation’s elementary and secondary schools. In the nation’s public schools, blacks are 17.4 percent of all students.

A new report from the Department of Education shows that blacks make up just 9.5 percent of the students at privately operated elementary and secondary schools. It is widely believed that private schools do a far better job in preparing students for college than the vast majority of the nation’s public schools. More than one third of the students at some of the nation’s highest-ranked universities such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton are graduates of private high schools.

Black students are more likely to attend private elementary schools than private high schools. Only 8.5 percent of the students at private high schools are black.

Blacks are 8.1 percent of the students at Catholic schools but 11.4 percent of the students at conservative Christian schools. Blacks make up 11.5 percent of the students in private schools in the Northeast, the highest level of any region of the country.