The 1997–98 Private School Universe Survey (PSS 1997–98) is a study that is part of the Private School Universe program; program data is available since 1989–1990 at <https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pss/pssdata.asp>. PSS 1997–98 (https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pss/) is a cross-sectional survey that collects data on private elementary and secondary schools, including religious orientation, level of school, length of school year, length of school day, total enrollment (K–12), race/ethnicity of students, number of high school graduates, number of teachers employed, program emphasis, and existence and type of kindergarten program. The study was conducted using mail questionnaires and telephone follow-up of all private schools in the United States. The PSS includes both schools with a religious orientation (e.g., Catholic, Lutheran, or Jewish) and nonsectarian schools with programs ranging from regular to special emphasis and special education. Key statistics produced from PSS 1997–98 are on the number of religiously affiliated schools, the number of private high school graduates, and the number of private school students and teachers.
The Elementary/Secondary Information System (ELSi) is an NCES web application that allows users to quickly view public and private school data and create custom tables and charts using data from the Common Core of Data (CCD) and Private School Survey (PSS)
1997-98 Private School Universe Survey data as a zipped TSV file
1997-98 Private School Universe Survey data as a zipped SAS 7-formatted binary data file
1997-98 Private School Universe Survey data as a zipped SPSS-formatted binary data file