By Lauren May and Ron Matus
Florida continues to be a standout in Catholic school growth. But the latest national data from the National Catholic Educational Association, released Tuesday, shows other states with expansive new school choice programs are gaining steam.
In fact, Florida is no longer the only state in the Top 10 states for Catholic school enrollment to show a net gain over the past decade. This year it’s joined by Indiana. The Hoosier State is now in the plus column thanks to this year’s jump of nearly 4,000 students.
(Indiana, by the way, replaced Missouri in the Top 10. Missouri’s enrollment has been relatively stable for the past five years, but it dipped just enough for Indiana to pull ahead.)
No state had a bigger one-year increase than Indiana, the new report shows. Plenty of others, though, are seeing significant growth, including Ohio, Iowa, and New Hampshire, all states with choice programs that encompass universal eligibility.
Check out the data for yourself in the chart we put together at the bottom of this post. It includes the NCEA’s year-by-year numbers for all 50 states, going back a decade.
The report isn’t just good news for individual states. Nationally, enrollment stayed pretty steady for a fifth straight year. After decades of falling numbers, that’s encouraging – and supporters of Catholic education, and education pluralism more broadly, should feel the wind at their backs.
Meanwhile, don’t forget about Florida just yet.
Catholic school enrollment down here is up 12% over the past decade, while total K-12 growth ran about 10% over that span.
The Sunshine State’s been the outlier for years, buoyed by the most robust school choice programs in America. It’s for that reason that we issued a special report, “Why Catholic Schools in Florida Are Growing: 5 Things to Know,” in 2023, and followed it up with update briefs in 2024 and 2025.
Stay tuned for the 2026 update soon.
About the authors
Lauren May is Vice President and Head of the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit Program at Step Up For Students and a former Senior Director of Advocacy at Step Up For Students. As a proud graduate
of the University of Florida, she received her bachelor’s degree in special education
and her master's degree in early childhood education. She then completed another
master's degree in educational leadership from Saint Leo University. A former
Catholic school teacher, early childhood director, and principal, she was honored with
University of Florida’s “Outstanding Young Alumni” award in 2018. As a believer
that parents are the first and best educators of their children, Lauren loves working
with families across the state and beyond to ensure they can find and make
use of the best educational options for their children.
Ron Matus is Director, Research & Special Projects, at Step Up For Students. He earned a bachelor's degree in history and English/creative writing from Florida State University and a master's degree in Florida Studies from the University of South Florida. He joined Step Up in 2012 after more than 20 years as an award-winning journalist, including eight years as the state education reporter for the Tampa Bay Times, the state’s biggest and most influential newspaper.
