Here's What It Costs To Attend Private High Schools In Chicago Area

CHICAGO — Parents paying for a private high school education for their children have nearly 250 to choose from in Illinois, according to a new report from U.S. News & World Report.

Because of limited data availability, the schools weren’t evaluated in the same manner as public institutions in the 2024 Best High Schools ranking. Profiles compiled by the news outlet show the costs of tuition, ratios of students to teachers, total number of students, faculty and demographic information.

According to U.S. News, the largest private school in Illinois is American School, a not-for-profit distance learning school based in Lansing with an enrollment of more than 3,800 students and annual tuition of less than $950.

The University of Chicago Lab School has the next highest enrollment and the largest of any in-person private school, with more than 1,900 students from prekindergarten through high school. Annual tuition there exceeds $38,000, and there are just 10 students for every teacher.

St. Ignatius College Prep, the largest Catholic high school in the state, has 1,373 students, a student-teacher ratio of 16 to one and annual tuition just under $20,000.

Fenwick High School in Oak Park is attended by more students than any other suburban high school. It has 1,075 students, a seven to one student-teacher ratio and annual tuition of $17,300.

Latin School of Chicago, Timothy Christian School of Elmhurst and Marion Catholic High School in Chicago Heights are the only other Illinois private schools with enrollment of 1,000 or greater, according to U.S. News.

There are more than 30,000 private schools in the country, according to U.S. News. Private school enrollment among all grades is declining, down to 4.7 million students enrolled in private schools in 2019, compared to 5.7 million in 2019, U.S. News said in a previous report analyzing publicly available data.

That coincides with efforts by lawmakers in dozens of states to expand school choice laws that direct public funding to private educational opportunities, according to FutureEd, an independent think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.

After a flurry of school choice laws in 2023 — a “landmark year for school choice,” EdFuture said — lawmakers in 34 states introduced or pre-filed at least 114 private-school choice bills.

Related: 5 Selective-Enrollment Chicago Public High Schools Ranked In Nation's Top 100

In Illinois, the Invest in Kids Scholarship Tax Credit Program, first enacted in 2017, ended at the start of this year.

During last year's fall veto session, a vote on renewing the program was not called to the floor by the Democratic House leadership.

The program allowed people and corporations to donate to scholarship-granting organizations, which then distributed funds to low-income families to help pay for private school tuition.

In exchange for donating to one of a half-dozen state approved private school scholarship organizations, donors could claim a 75 percent tax credit, up to a total of $75 million per year statewide.

Teachers' unions and public school advocates opposed the tax credit program, arguing that it diverted public funds away from public schools and lacked accountability.

Supporters of the program, which was implemented to resolve a budget standoff between the Democratic legislative majority and Republican former Gov. Bruce Rauner, contended it provided lower-income families with sorely needed educational options.

A study of the Invest in Kids tax credit scholarship program commissioned by the Illinois State Board of Education found public school students generally outperformed students with the scholarships in standardized tests.

For instance, less than 21 percent of Invest in Kids private school students in grades 3 through 8 met state readiness expectations in English, compared with more than 30 percent of public school students in the same grades for the 2021-22 school year. And less than a fifth of students with Invest in Kids scholarships were proficient in math in 2022, compared to about one in four public school students, according to the 130-page study.

However, the study only compared low-income scholarship students with the average public school population, rather than to those with similar socioeconomic backgrounds to the students receiving the scholarships.

Representatives of the research firm that conducted the $640,000 study, WestEd, told WTTW they were "constrained" by the data state board of education officials provided, which did not contain demographic information or information about income levels, and unable to compare Invest in Kids students with similar public school students.