By Gail Bulfin - Florida Catholic
Here are some statistics on Catholic education for the 2013-2014 school year:
Nationally
- Enrollment for the current academic year is 1,974,578; 1,391,793 in elementary/middle schools; 582,785 in secondary schools
- 6,594 Catholic schools: 5,399 elementary; 1,195 secondary
- 42 new schools opened; 133 consolidated or closed
- 1,986 schools have a waiting list for admission
- The student/teacher ratio is 13:1
Archdiocese of Miami
- Enrollment - 34,000 students
- 61 Catholic schools: 48 elementary schools and 13 secondary
- U. S. Catholic school enrollment reached its peak during the early 1960s, when there were more than 5.2 million students in almost 13,000 schools across the nation.
- The 1970s and 1980s saw a steep decline in both the number of schools and students.
- By 1990, there were approximately 2.5 million students in 8,719 schools.
- From the mid-1990s though 2000, there was a steady enrollment increase (1.3 percent) despite continued closings of schools.
- Between the 2004 and the 2014 school years, 1,856 schools were reported closed or consolidated (23.2 percent). The number of students declined by 578,699 (22.7 percent).
- The most seriously impacted have been elementary schools. Since 2003, elementary school enrollment has declined by 30.0 percent in the 12 urban dioceses and 18.7 percent in the rest of the U.S.
Source: National Catholic Education Association, Archdiocese of Miami websites
