An Analysis of Private School Closings

We add to the small literature on private school supply by exploring exits of K-12 private schools. We find that the closure of private schools is not an infrequent event and use national survey data from the National Center for Education Statistics to study closures of private schools. We assume that the probability of an exit is a function of excess supply of private schools over demand as well as of the school's characteristics, such as age, size, and religious affiliation. Our empirical results generally support the implications of the model.