Elementary and Secondary Schools (U.S.) — NAICS 611110

A Histometrics industry primer for public- and private-market investors

1. Overview

The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 611110 covers the establishments that deliver K–12 education (kindergarten through 12th grade): elementary, middle, and high schools, plus kindergartens, boarding and prep schools, parochial schools, military academies at the primary/secondary level, and schools serving students with disabilities [3]. By headcount it is one of the largest activities in the U.S. economy — roughly 8.2 million people work in it, teaching about 54 million children [4][5][9] — yet it is one of the least "investable" in the ordinary sense, because most of it is run by government, not by companies.

That split is the single most important fact for an investor. Public school districts educate about 49.5 million students, or roughly nine in ten enrolled children, and they are funded by taxes rather than tuition or profit [4]. Private schools — mostly nonprofit and religious — educate about 4.7 million more [5]. Only a thin, fast-changing layer of the sector is owned by profit-seeking firms: virtual-school operators, for-profit charter managers, private-equity-backed chains of tuition schools, and the software/curriculum vendors that sell into schools.

So there are really three ways in:

• Public markets: a very short list of listed companies (one near-pure-play K–12 operator plus adjacent content, software, and tutoring vendors), and the bond market — school-district and charter-school debt is a large slice of the roughly $4 trillion U.S. municipal bond market.
• Private markets: where most of the real private capital sits — private-equity roll-ups of tuition schools (a $14.5 billion take-private happened here in 2025 [15]), for-profit charter-management platforms, K–12 software companies, and school real estate.
• Policy-driven upside: the rapid spread of state "school choice" programs (vouchers and education savings accounts) is redirecting public dollars toward private and charter providers — the sector's main investment thesis today [13].

2. What it is and how it's structured

In scope (611110): schools whose primary business is teaching an academic curriculum from kindergarten through 12th grade — traditional district schools, charter schools, private day and boarding schools, parochial schools, and full-time virtual K–12 schools [3].

Explicitly excluded (these are separate NAICS codes, and mixing them up distorts any market sizing) [3]:

• 611210 Junior Colleges and 611310 Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools — higher education.
• 624410 Child Day Care Services — daycare and most preschools providing primarily custodial care (Bright Horizons, KinderCare live here, not in 611110).
• 611691 Exam Preparation and Tutoring; 611610 / 611620 fine-arts and sports instruction — supplemental, not degree-track schooling.
• 611710 Educational Support Services — testing, curriculum, and consulting vendors (Pearson, McGraw Hill, Scholastic) that sell to schools rather than operate them.

Ownership mix. Three legal forms dominate:

1. Government (public districts): about 99,400 public schools run by roughly 19,200 local districts and agencies, including ~8,000 charter schools [4][10]. Charters are publicly funded but independently governed, often contracting with a nonprofit or for-profit charter-management organization (CMO).
2. Nonprofit private: the bulk of the ~29,700 private schools. In 2021–22, 66% of private schools reported a religious orientation and 34% were nonsectarian; religious schools enrolled 76.7% of private-school students, and Catholic schools alone numbered about 6,000 [5].
3. For-profit: a minority — for-profit charter managers, proprietary private schools, and virtual-school operators. This is the slice equity investors can actually own, and it is small.

3. How big it is

The industry is enormous in human and dollar terms, but federal business statistics capture only a fraction of it, because those datasets count private-sector establishments and largely exclude government. Read the two frames side by side.

Federal business-census frame — Census County Business Patterns (CBP), 2023 (the private/independent employer slice only) [1]:

The SBA size standard means a school company with under $20 million in annual receipts counts as "small." Note that annual payroll is not industry revenue, and our ground-truth source set provides no industry-wide revenue, profit, or margin figure for 611110 — so none is estimated here.

Full-industry frame (federal education statistics):

• Employment: about 8.2 million workers — roughly 7.29 million in government-run schools and 0.93 million in privately owned ones [9].
• Students: ~49.5 million public [4] plus ~4.7 million private [5] ≈ 54 million enrolled, plus about 3.4 million homeschooled [11].
• Schools: ~99,400 public [4] and ~29,700 private [5].
• Public finance (fiscal 2022): total revenue of about $909 billion and current spending of roughly $857 billion, or about $15,600 per pupil [7].

The undercount caveat. CBP's ~1.18 million employees and ~23,000 establishments essentially represent private and independently-chartered schools; the ~7.3 million people working in tax-funded public districts — the ~99,000 schools that teach nine in ten students — sit outside the business-census frame because they are government employers [1][9]. When you read "the elementary-and-secondary-school industry has 1.2 million workers," that is the private-sector industry. The full economic sector is roughly seven times larger and majority public. Treat CBP as a measure of the commercial opportunity, not of the industry.

4. The investable universe

For an equity investor this is a strikingly thin list. There is essentially one U.S.-listed near-pure-play K–12 school operator; almost every other scaled operator is privately held, nonprofit, or governmental.

Publicly traded (operators and close adjacents):

Not part of this industry: early-childhood/childcare names (Bright Horizons — BFAM; KinderCare — KLC) sit in 624410. China-listed tutoring firms (New Oriental — EDU; TAL Education — TAL) are after-school tutoring, gutted by China's 2021 "double-reduction" crackdown, and are not U.S. K–12.

Major private / other operators (where most private capital and scale actually are):

The fixed-income universe is far bigger than the equity one. Public school districts are among the largest issuers of tax-exempt general obligation (GO) bonds — debt backed by local property taxes, used to build and renovate schools. Charter schools, which usually cannot issue GO debt, instead borrow through tax-exempt revenue bonds: from 1998 to 2022, charters in 34 states borrowed over $40 billion, nearly 1% of the municipal market [17]. For most investors, "owning" a school means owning school-district or charter paper in a muni bond fund, not a stock.

5. How the money works

Because the industry runs on three business models, it has three different economic engines.

Public districts — a tax-funded service, not a profit center. Revenue is per-pupil funding drawn from three pots: state aid (~45%), local property taxes (~41%), and federal (~14%) [7][8]. The federal share was temporarily elevated by pandemic aid in fiscal 2022 (13.7%); historically it runs ~8–10%. Districts don't earn profit, so an investor's exposure is credit quality on their bonds. The metrics that matter are the enrollment trend (it drives state aid and therefore debt-service coverage), the local property-tax base and assessed values, fund-balance reserves, debt per pupil, and unfunded pension and retiree-health (OPEB, other post-employment benefits) liabilities. Labor is the cost story: instruction is the single largest expense, and salaries and benefits are roughly 80% of current spending.

Private tuition schools — occupancy and net tuition. A private school is a high-fixed-cost business: teachers and facilities must be paid whether a classroom holds 15 students or 25. The key drivers are:

• Enrollment / seat occupancy — capacity utilization is everything; a half-empty campus loses money.
• Net tuition — gross tuition minus financial aid and discounting; rising discount rates quietly erode margins.
• Operating leverage — because costs are largely fixed, each additional student is high-margin and each empty seat is punishing. Labor is typically 70–80% of the budget.
• Endowment income and donations for established nonprofits, and, increasingly, voucher/ESA dollars in participating states.

Charter and virtual operators — funding follows the student. This is the model equity investors actually buy. Revenue is public per-pupil funding (roughly $8,000–$16,000 per student depending on state) multiplied by enrollment; the money follows each child to the school [10]. For-profit charter managers typically take a management fee as a percentage of a school's revenue; virtual operators like Stride book the school's operations directly. Growth comes from opening new schools and ramping enrollment; margins hinge on staffing ratios, the state per-pupil rate, student retention, and real-estate strategy (owning vs. leasing). Virtual schools avoid most real-estate cost but spend heavily on student acquisition and live under constant academic-outcome and regulatory scrutiny.

In private M&A, tuition-school chains change hands at roughly 8–14× EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization), with supply-constrained premium markets at the top of that range [16]. The most useful operating metrics across all three models are enrollment growth, retention, average daily attendance, revenue and net tuition per student, occupancy, labor cost per student, student-teacher ratio, school-opening ramp, charter-renewal status, and cash conversion. Core demand is defensive, but operating profit can be fragile: pricing power is limited, and affordability and financial-aid pressure cap private tuition.

6. What drives demand

• Compulsory education. Every state requires schooling, which makes baseline demand unusually durable.
• Demographics — the base driver, and it is shrinking. NCES (National Center for Education Statistics) projects public enrollment to fall from about 49.6 million (fall 2022) to 46.9 million by fall 2031, a 5.5% decline [6]. Lower birth rates point to a "demographic cliff" in the number of school-age children through the early 2030s — a structural headwind for total enrollment and for per-pupil-tied funding.
• School choice policy — the fastest-moving lever. Vouchers and education savings accounts (ESAs) move public dollars to private, charter, and homeschool options; where they go universal, private and charter demand surges (see §7 and §10) [13].
• Public-school satisfaction and outcomes. Post-pandemic learning loss, safety concerns, and dissatisfaction have pushed families toward charters, private schools, and homeschooling. Charters are the only public segment still growing, and homeschooling roughly doubled its pre-pandemic share to ~3.4 million students [10][11].
• Online and blended learning. Flexible scheduling, geographic access, credit recovery, and specialized courses sustain demand for virtual platforms.
• Special education. Federal disability-education mandates create recurring demand for specialized staff and outside providers.
• Migration. Population flows toward the Sun Belt (and away from the Northeast/Midwest) mean the national decline hides fast-growing local pockets and school construction.

The upshot: growth is more likely to come from share shifts — charters, private choice, online delivery, and specialized services — than from broad national enrollment growth.

7. Regulation

K–12 is one of the most heavily regulated activities in the country, and it is governed mostly at the state level. State and local authorities set school authorization, curriculum, attendance, graduation standards, teacher licensing, and most school finance; requirements for private schools vary widely by state [12].

• Charter authorization. Whether — and how easily — a charter (and its for-profit manager) can operate is set by state charter law and local authorizers. These laws effectively define the addressable market for charter/CMO operators.
• School choice programs. State voucher and ESA statutes route public money to private options; ESAs typically provide $6,000–$10,000 per student [13]. They are the main growth catalyst — and are frequently litigated (an Ohio court found the state's universal voucher unconstitutional; challenges continue) [13].
• Federal frameworks (historically modest, ~8–14% of budgets). The main levers are the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), reauthorized as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015); Title I funding for low-income students; the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which guarantees a free appropriate public education for eligible students with disabilities; the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which protects student records; Title IX (sex discrimination); and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on disability access [31].
• Federal role now shrinking. In March 2025 the President signed Executive Order (EO) 14242 directing the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education; the FY2026 budget request cut the department by roughly 15% and proposed consolidating IDEA and 18 ESSA programs. In July 2025 the Supreme Court paused an injunction, letting staff reductions proceed while litigation continues [14]. The direction of travel is toward more state control and block-granting — though Congress must act to fully close the department, so this remains a forward-looking judgment.

Investors should track charter renewals, enrollment caps, state funding formulas, voucher eligibility, teacher-credential rules, special-education reimbursement, procurement rules, and student-data-privacy requirements.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

• A government-dominated market with a growing competitive fringe. Public districts still teach ~90% of students, but they are losing share at the margin to charters, private schools, and homeschooling as choice policies spread [10][11][13].
• A highly fragmented private base. In 2021–22, 11,878 private schools had fewer than 50 students and another 8,075 had 50–149; together those two groups were 67.2% of all private schools [5]. That fragmentation is exactly what roll-up strategies target.
• Enrollment decline is forcing public consolidation. Falling headcount, especially in big-city and rural districts, is driving school closures and district mergers — a slow, politically fraught form of consolidation.
• Private-market roll-ups of tuition schools. Private equity has spent a decade assembling international and premium-tuition chains; Nord Anglia grew through 20-plus bolt-on acquisitions before its $14.5 billion take-private, and Inspired, Cognita, GEMS, and Spring follow the same buy-and-build playbook [15][16][25]. Expect continued branding of independent schools into groups.
• Charter-management concentration. A handful of for-profit managers (Academica, Charter Schools USA, NHA) and large nonprofit networks (KIPP, IDEA, Success Academy) increasingly dominate charter operation; one advocacy count found ~164 for-profit companies running 1,400+ charters [18].
• The most scalable businesses are software and content platforms. PE has been most active where a product can be sold across thousands of schools: PowerSchool was taken private by Bain Capital for $5.6 billion in 2024, and Renaissance is owned by Francisco Partners [29][30]. Physical-school rollups work, but local reputation, labor, facilities, and regulation limit standardization.

As choice programs expand and "funding follows the student," schools of every type compete for the same per-pupil dollars — the closest this industry comes to same-store competition.

9. Risks

• The demographic cliff. A shrinking pool of school-age children (down a projected 5.5% by 2031) caps enrollment and pressures per-pupil-funded revenue for years — the sector's biggest structural risk [6].
• The ESSER fiscal cliff. Congress sent schools nearly $190 billion in one-time COVID relief (ESSER, Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief); the obligation deadline passed on September 30, 2024, leaving districts that used it for recurring staff facing budget gaps, layoffs, and cuts [12].
• Policy volatility. School funding and structure are political footballs — the push to dismantle the federal Department of Education, court fights over vouchers, and shifting state budgets make the rules unusually unstable [13][14].
• Labor cost and shortages. With 70–80% of budgets in salaries, teacher-pay pressure and persistent shortages squeeze both public credit quality and private-operator margins.
• Pension and OPEB overhang (public credit). Unfunded retirement liabilities weaken many districts' balance sheets — a core risk for muni bondholders.
• Special-education obligations exceeding reimbursement, and tuition affordability, bad debt, and financial-aid pressure for private operators.
• Academic-outcome, safety, and reputational risk. For-profit and virtual operators face heightened scrutiny over test scores, enrollment practices, and "nonprofit-in-name-only" structures; a charter can lose its authorization — and its entire revenue base — if outcomes disappoint [18].
• Cybersecurity and data privacy. Student-data breaches, ransomware, and improper use of artificial intelligence (AI) are growing liabilities under FERPA and state law.
• Concentration and re-enrollment risk. High-fixed-cost operators depend on refilling seats every year; a single bad enrollment cycle hits hard. Government-funding concentration and delayed reconciliations add cash-flow risk.
• Nonprofit and governmental structure. Much of the sector simply cannot be owned as equity or pay distributions — and public data (CBP) does not capture the full footprint.

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public-market routes:

• Equity: the only scaled, U.S.-listed near-pure-play is Stride (LRN), a leveraged bet on virtual and choice-funded schooling; revenue rose from ~$2.0B (FY2024) to ~$2.4B (FY2025) as enrollment climbed [19]. Because it also runs career- and adult-learning lines, separate its K–12 revenue when underwriting. Broader exposure comes through content, software, and tutoring vendors (Graham Holdings, McGraw Hill, Pearson, Scholastic, Nerdy) — adjacent codes, not school operators. Expect the listed pure-play universe to stay tiny.
• Fixed income: the deepest liquid exposure is municipal bonds — school-district GO bonds (property-tax-backed, core investment-grade holdings) and charter revenue bonds (higher yield for higher credit and demographic risk), held directly or via muni funds. Credit turns on enrollment, tax base, and pension health [17].

Private-market routes: this is where the sector's real private capital flows — PE funds building international and premium-tuition school groups (Nord Anglia, Inspired, Cognita, GEMS, Spring), for-profit charter-management platforms, K–12 software and assessment companies (PowerSchool, Renaissance), and school real estate (owning campuses and leasing them to charters and private schools is a recurring PE and net-lease strategy) [15][16][25][29][30]. Diligence the legal entity first: a nonprofit school, a public charter, a for-profit management company, and a school-building owner may share one campus but carry entirely different rights, liabilities, and cash flows.

Near-term drivers to watch (forward-looking):

1. School-choice expansion. Universal ESA/voucher programs — live or newly passed in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, Iowa, and others — are the primary tailwind for private and charter demand. Florida's ESA already tops 220,000 enrollees, and its traditional-public share has fallen toward half [13].
2. Federal restructuring. How far the Department of Education is actually wound down, and whether Title I/IDEA dollars get block-granted to states, will reshape funding flows [14].
3. The demographic cliff vs. choice. The tug-of-war between a shrinking student pool (bearish for totals) and market-share gains by charters, private, and virtual providers (bullish for the investable operators) defines the sector's next decade.
4. AI in the classroom and continued virtual/hybrid adoption, which favor asset-light operators like Stride over facilities-heavy incumbents.

Bottom line: 611110 is a huge, defensive, largely public industry that — for most of its mass — is not something you can buy. The investable edge sits in the growing private and choice-funded fringe: one near-pure-play listed virtual operator, a large and liquid muni-bond market, PE roll-ups of tuition schools, and the software/content platforms that serve them — all riding the fastest expansion of U.S. school-choice policy in a generation, against a demographic headwind that will test whether that fringe can keep taking share.

---

Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns: 2023, NAICS 611110 (23,201 establishments; 1,176,824 employees; $56.82B annual payroll; $13.65B Q1 payroll). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
2. U.S. Small Business Administration / U.S. GPO, 13 CFR 121.201: Small Business Size Standards (NAICS 611110 = $20 million receipts), 2023. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2023-title13-vol1/pdf/CFR-2023-title13-vol1-sec121-201.pdf
3. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 North American Industry Classification System Manual (definition and exclusions for 611110). https://www.census.gov/naics/reference_files_tools/2022_NAICS_Manual.pdf
4. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Common Core of Data, Number of Operating Public Elementary and Secondary Schools and Districts, 2022–23 (99,409 schools; 19,204 districts; 49,514,913 students). https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/tables/202223_summary_2.asp
5. NCES, Private School Universe Survey, 2021–22 (29,727 schools; 4,731,303 students; 66% religious / 34% nonsectarian; religious = 76.7% of students; size distribution). https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pss/tables/TABLE02fl2122.asp
6. NCES, Enrollment in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools, Fall 1990 Through Fall 2031 (49,618,464 in 2022 projected to 46,889,600 by 2031, −5.5%). https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_203.20.asp
7. NCES / U.S. Census Bureau, Public School Finance, Fiscal 2022 (total revenue ~$909.2B; federal share 13.7%; current spending ~$857B, ~$15,600 per pupil). https://nces.ed.gov/learn/press-release/total-current-expenditures-grew-1-8-percent-public-elementary-and-secondary-schools-fiscal-2022
8. NCES, Condition of Education — Public School Revenue Sources (state / local / federal shares). https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cma/public-school-revenue
9. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, Educational Services Employment for American Education Week (local-government schools 7,290,432; private schools 934,096 employees), 2024. https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2024/learning-about-educational-services-employment-for-american-education-week.htm
10. National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Charter School Enrollment Grows Across the Nation (~8,000 schools; ~3.7M students; ~7% of public), 2024. https://publiccharters.org/news/new-report-shows-charter-school-enrollment-grows-across-the-nation/
11. National Home Education Research Institute (~3.4M homeschool students, 2024–25) and Pew Research Center, A look at homeschooling in the US, 2025. https://nheri.org/how-many-homeschool-students-are-there-in-the-united-states/
12. U.S. Department of Education, State Regulation of Private and Home Schools, 2025; and Chalkbeat / Washington Post on ESSER (~$190B; obligation deadline Sept 30, 2024). https://www.ed.gov/birth-grade-12-education/education-choice/state-regulation-of-private-and-home-schools
13. EdChoice, 2025 EdChoice Share; National Conference of State Legislatures, State Actions on Education Savings Accounts; Ballotpedia, States with and without universal school choice programs, 2025. https://www.edchoice.org/2025-edchoice-share-exploring-where-americas-students-are-educated/
14. EdSource, Trump signs executive order to dismantle Department of Education (EO 14242), 2025; Brookings, The status of litigation against the Trump administration's K-12 education agenda, 2025. https://edsource.org/2025/trump-signs-executive-order-to-dismantle-department-of-education/728843
15. EQT, Neuberger Berman, EQT and CPP Investments to acquire Nord Anglia Education ($14.5B); The PIE News, Nord Anglia Education acquired in $14.5bn deal, 2024–25. https://thepienews.com/nord-anglia-education-acquired-in-14-5bn-deal/
16. PitchBook / CB Insights company profiles (Inspired Education, Cognita, GEMS Education) and private-school M&A multiples. https://www.cbinsights.com/company/inspired-education/financials
17. LISC, Charter School Bond Study (charters borrowed >$40B in tax-exempt bonds, 1998–2022, ~1% of the muni market); National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Tax-Exempt Private Activity Bonds. https://report.lisc.org/charter-school-bond-study/introduction
18. Network for Public Education, Chartered for Profit, 2021 (~164 for-profit companies, 1,400+ charters); National Heritage Academies, Who We Are (100+ schools, 9 states, 65,000+ students). https://networkforpubliceducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Chartered-for-Profit.pdf
19. Stride, Inc., Form 10-K for the Year Ended June 30, 2025 and Stride Achieves Another Record Year (FY2025 revenue ~$2.41B; FY2024 ~$2.04B; ~240,000+ students). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1157408/000155837025010334/lrn-20250630x10k.htm
20. Graham Holdings Company, Form 10-K for the Year Ended December 31, 2025 (Ohana Institute; Kaplan). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104889/000162828026011405/ghc-20251231.htm
21. McGraw Hill, Inc., Form 10-K and 2026 Proxy Statement (2025 IPO; Platinum Equity controlling sponsor). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1951070/000195107026000022/mh-20260331.htm
22. Pearson plc, Annual Report and Accounts 2025 (Form 20-F). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/938323/000119312526104945/d33885d20f.htm
23. Scholastic Corporation, Form 10-K for the Year Ended May 31, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/866729/000086672925000020/schl-20250531.htm
24. Nerdy Inc., Form 10-K for the Year Ended December 31, 2025 (Varsity Tutors for Schools). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1819404/000181940426000015/nrdy-20251231.htm
25. Spring Education Group, About Us (Primavera Holdings; 200+ schools plus online private school). https://www.springeducationgroup.com/
26. Charter Schools USA, Mission, Values and Promise (81,000+ students; ~154 schools; 4 states). https://www.charterschoolsusa.com/
27. Academica, Our History (supports 200+ institutions; ~165,000 students). https://academica.org/history
28. KIPP Public Schools (279 schools; ~210,000 students/alumni). https://www.kipp.org/
29. Bain Capital, PowerSchool to Be Acquired by Bain Capital in $5.6 Billion Transaction, 2024. https://www.baincapital.com/news/powerschool-be-acquired-bain-capital-56-billion-transaction
30. Francisco Partners, Renaissance (private K–12 assessment/learning-software company). https://www.franciscopartners.com/investments/renaissance
31. U.S. Department of Education — federal K–12 frameworks: ESSA (https://www.ed.gov/laws-and-policy/laws-preschool-grade-12-education/every-student-succeeds-act-essa-0), IDEA (https://sites.ed.gov/idea/statuteregulations/), FERPA (https://studentprivacy.ed.gov/content/family-educational-rights-and-privacy-act), Title IX and Section 504/ADA.