New Study: How State Scholarships Affect Jewish Day School Affordability
Jewish day school tuition is a major burden for families, but the growth of tuition over time has received little rigorous research attention. This study provides a first look at tuition trends over time and finds that state scholarship programs are providing meaningful relief to families.
- The study examines tuition, enrollment, scholarship awards, and regional inflation across 74 Jewish day schools serving more than 30,000 students from 2012 to 2022.
- After accounting for state scholarships, out-of-pocket costs for families increase 4% slower than inflation in scholarship states while increasing 7% faster than inflation in New York and New Jersey, which don’t have state scholarhip programs.
- After adjusting for regional inflation, average tuition rose somewhat faster in scholarship states (12%) than in non-scholarship states (7%), suggesting that schools may capture a limited portion of scholarship funding through higher tuition.
- However, the study estimates that families still received the majority of the benefit, with 68% of scholarship growth reducing families’ out-of-pocket costs, while 32% may have supported higher tuition and school budgets.
Although additional research is needed, these findings indicate that scholarship programs make Jewish education more affordable by reducing families’ out-of-pocket costs, even as schools capture a limited share of scholarship funding. The findings underscore the importance of maximizing participation in the federal scholarship tax credit, which will begin in 2027 and—if the Jewish community is effectively mobilized—could result in hundreds of millions of dollars for Jewish day school families across the country.
