June 5, 2020 9:57AM # Private School COVID-19 Permanent Closure Tracker: New Home, New Data By [Neal McCluskey](https://www.cato.org/people/neal-mccluskey) --- SHARE Due to its growing size and [increasing](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/us/politics/betsy-devos-coronavirus-private-schools.html) [visibility](https://www.the74million.org/article/covid-poses-an-existential-threat-to-many-private-schools-but-congress-might-block-devoss-push-for-relief/) of the [issue](https://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/Will-Bay-Area-s-private-high-schools-survive-15314757.php), we have moved the private school permanent closure tracker to [its own, permanent page](https://www.cato.org/covid-19-permanent-private-closures). We will try to update it every weekday by 5:30 pm ET. The tracker page features summary information about permanent closures at least partially connected to COVID-19, and a link to the full list of schools and some other data we have collected but not summarized largely due to difficulty finding it for many schools. We will be analyzing the data in further depth soon, but one thing to note right away: It appears to be private schools serving less-wealthy communities that tend to be the ones closing. We do not have direct measures of wealth, but these schools have much lower estimated tuition than the average private school: $7,575 versus [roughly $12,000](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_205.50.asp?current=yes). (This is also half of the [around $15,000](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_236.55.asp?current=yes) spent per student in public schools.) They also tend to have smaller shares of white students: 56 percent versus [67 percent](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgc.asp). Learn more by visiting—and bookmarking—the tracker’s [new page](https://www.cato.org/covid-19-permanent-private-closures)! ##### Related Tags [COVID-19](https://www.cato.org/covid-19), [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).