Granted a growth in the raw number of private school students, Mitch, and certainly every child educated by non-public means is a significant savings to taxpayers. However, it is interesting to note the historical data from the Division of Non-Public Education shows that as a percentage of all school-aged children in the state, enrollment in conventional private schools has fallen from a recent peak of 6.4% in the 2001-2002 school year to 5.9% last year. Homeschooling, meanwhile, has grown from 3.2% to 4.3% in the same period. I’ll be interested to see what those figures look like when DNPE releases them in August.

Bottom line, the total enrollment in nonpublic education grew from 8.4% in 1999-2000 to 10.2% last year.