Public education has been a primary institution for the creation of American citizenship since government-supported schools became widespread in the mid-nineteenth century.

Despite concerns about content and efficacy it has coalesced as a comprehensive network with interlocking local, state and federal control. It also represents a major commitment in tax support of both the people and multiple governments. Private schools at the primary and secondary levels, by contrast, offer choices, which may involve exclusivity based on religion, race, gender or class. In the early twenty-first century choices also reflect concerns with public schools, their educational methods and contents, or violence and social issues that lead parents to seek alternatives.

The Roman Catholic parochial school system is the largest private system nationwide (religious orders also run private schools). Jewish day schools, at least elementary are also widely available, while groups like the Amish have fought to maintain educational autonomy Episcopalians and Quakers also run longstanding private schools less exclusively denominational in tone. Religious private schools also include Christian academies that emerged with white flight. Many private schools, however, have no formal religious affiliation.

Private schools have also been associated with class divisions, especially with regard to elite “prep” schools. New England academies like Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts (founded 1778), Phillips Exeter (founded 1781), Lawrenceville, Groton, Deerfield and ChoateRosemary Hall offer strong curricula and teachers, distinguished active alumni, historical buildings and campus landscapes, extensive facilities and welltrodden paths to the Ivy League, although few rival the $400 million endowments of Phillips Andover and Phillips Exeter. This entails selectivity in academic excellence and cost, since tuition may run from $15,000 to 120,000 annually before board (although schools provide financial aid). This model has been depicted in literature like Owen Johnson’s Lawrenceville Stories, and figures in Hollywood portrayals of private schools, such as Dead Poet’s Society (1989).

Other metropolitan areas offer a competitive, varied hierarchy of selective private schools—competition for placement in New York City can start almost from birth—as well as variation in costs and financial aid. In general, private schools claim to offer a superior education in facilities, teachers and selection of students. Some also offer innovative programs, including Montessori formats, more libertarian “free schools,” foreign residential opportunities and seminar settings. Private schools may offer singlegender education, although many have become co-educational since the 1970s.

Debates over public and private schooling are often debates about finance, control and the nature of the public sphere. Some argue that the competition of private schools regulates and energizes public education. Here, choosing private schools criticizes the failures, moral and educational, of the public system. School vouchers, for example, that allow parents to take money from the public system to subsidize their choice of private education have been especially controversial. Proponents of public schools, meanwhile, characterize private schools as privileged and their supporters as opponents of the idea of a heterogeneous public educational space in which different races, classes and levels of ability meet. Regulations about contents, practices and standards for measuring student success remain areas where government and private schools intersect. These debates continue to rage in legislatures, school boards and mass media as well as the classroom.