The Best Private Schools in Las Vegas

People hear “Las Vegas” and think casinos, tourists, and the Strip. What they don’t expect is a competitive private school market with genuinely strong options across every grade level and educational philosophy. But it’s there, and for parents who’ve done even a little research, it becomes clear pretty quickly that this city takes education seriously in ways that surprise a lot of newcomers.

The challenge is figuring out which school actually fits your kid. Not your neighbor’s kid. Not the kid from your kid’s soccer team whose parents seem to have everything figured out. Yours. That’s what this list is really about.

Embrace Academy

Embrace Academy is the newest school on this list and, for a lot of families in the valley, it may be the most significant addition to Las Vegas private education in years. It opened in Summerlin in fall 2025 and it’s built around a premise that sounds simple but is rarely executed well: small classrooms change everything.

The school runs a 12:1 student-to-teacher ratio across kindergarten through 8th grade. That number matters more than most people realize when they first see it. At 12 kids per teacher, your child is not blending into the background. Their teacher knows how they learn, what frustrates them, what clicks for them, and what doesn’t. They know if your kid had a rough morning before they even say anything. That kind of relationship between a teacher and student is genuinely hard to build when there are 28 kids in a room, and it’s the norm at Embrace Academy because the whole school was designed around it.

Head of School Laura Bruni spent more than a decade in the Los Angeles Unified School District and later served as director of student support services at Adelson Educational Campus before founding Embrace Academy. Her background is in special education and student support, and that shapes everything about how the school operates. When she moved to Las Vegas, she saw a pretty clear gap: there weren’t enough good options for kids who learn differently, whether that meant a gifted kid who needed more challenge or a kid with an IEP who needed more hands-on support.

Embrace Academy is fully inclusive, which means it welcomes kids across the whole spectrum of learners. Students with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia are specifically supported through multisensory and differentiated instruction rather than just being placed in a general classroom and left to figure it out. Neurodivergent learners aren’t an afterthought here; the school was built with them in mind from the start.

The school also has speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy available on campus and integrated into individual learning plans. Parents who’ve spent years driving to separate appointments scattered across the valley will understand immediately why that matters.

Tuition is $22,000 per year, which puts it in line with other Las Vegas private schools. There are plans to add high school grades in 2026, and the school is also working with local organizations to build an on-campus community space for teenagers and young adults with autism and other special needs, which points to something bigger than just a school building.

If your child has ever struggled to get the attention they need in a traditional classroom, or if you have a neurodivergent kid who needs a learning environment that was actually designed for them, Embrace Academy is worth scheduling a tour before spaces fill up.

The Meadows School

The Meadows School is where you send your kid when college placement is the top priority and you want the data to back it up. It’s a PreK through 12th grade school in Las Vegas that Niche ranked as the number one private school in Nevada, and the outcomes genuinely support that ranking.

Graduates from recent classes have been accepted to Cornell, Duke, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Yale, among others. The school has a 100% graduation rate and 100% college attendance. Average SAT scores land around 1410 and ACT around 31. There are 27 AP courses on offer, which is a serious number for any high school, public or private.

The theatre program has won the state championship for more than seven years in a row and has three national titles, which tells you something about how seriously the arts are taken alongside academics. Class sizes average around 22 students, which is meaningfully smaller than most public schools, though families coming from something like Embrace Academy will notice the difference in scale.

The Meadows tends to attract students who are driven and families who are deeply invested in the college preparation process. If that’s your household, Meadows is probably the most natural fit in the entire city.

Faith Lutheran Middle School and High School

Faith Lutheran is the largest private school in Nevada and the largest Lutheran school in the country, with more than 2,000 students enrolled in grades 6 through 12. The size alone makes it a different kind of experience than most private schools, but the school has built something worth paying attention to within that scale.

It’s located in Summerlin and affiliated with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, so faith is genuinely woven into the experience rather than treated as a checkbox. Students engage academically, spiritually, and socially, and the school puts real weight on developing character alongside grades.

The academic program includes a strong range of AP courses along with solid STEM and arts offerings. Eighteen varsity sports give athletic kids a lot of opportunities, and graduates have been accepted to universities across the country. For families who want faith-based education at the high school level without sacrificing academic or extracurricular quality, this is the school most people end up at.

Faith Lutheran Academy, the elementary program serving kindergarten through 5th grade, operates separately nearby and carries the same values-centered approach for younger students.

Bishop Gorman High School

Bishop Gorman’s name comes up constantly in Las Vegas conversations about private schools, and a lot of that has to do with athletics. The football and basketball programs have gotten national attention, and the school has produced a long list of college-bound athletes. But reducing Gorman to its sports reputation would be selling it short.

The academic program is rigorous and college-preparatory, and the school is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Las Vegas. The campus is large, about 36 acres in the southwest valley, and enrollment sits around 1,500 students. Class sizes run close to 20:1, so it’s not a small-school experience, but the structure and tradition of the place give it a different kind of consistency.

Gorman is a good fit for families who want Catholic education, competitive athletics, and a school with a strong sense of identity. It has been part of Las Vegas for a long time and shows no signs of letting up.

The Alexander Dawson School at Rainbow Mountain

Dawson is a PreK through 8th grade independent school that takes a different approach than most of the schools on this list. Rather than focusing heavily on college prep metrics at the elementary and middle school level, Dawson leans into inquiry-based learning and tries to produce kids who are genuinely curious and capable of thinking for themselves.

The school has a small, close-knit culture and a student-to-teacher ratio that keeps classroom relationships manageable and personal. It’s the kind of place where teachers know families, not just students, and where the environment feels intentional rather than institutional. For parents who want their younger children to have an elementary experience that prioritizes depth over performance, Dawson is one of the better options in the city.

Adelson Educational Campus

Adelson is a PreK through 12th grade school in Summerlin that combines serious academic achievement with a strong Jewish identity. The school earned an A+ from Niche for academics and an A for both college prep and extracurricular offerings, which reflects how much is happening there across multiple dimensions.

The faculty is impressive: nearly half hold advanced degrees. The class of 2024 produced 15 National Merit Scholarship Commended Students, 11 Finalists, and 3 National Merit Scholarship Recipients. More than 40% of students are involved in the school’s clubs and organizations, which suggests a student body that’s engaged well beyond the classroom.

For Jewish families in Las Vegas who want their children to grow up with both rigorous academics and a meaningful connection to their cultural and religious identity in one place, Adelson is a natural first call.

How to Actually Choose

Touring schools is useful. Talking to other parents is useful. Rankings are useful. But the thing that tends to get overlooked is asking each school a very direct question: what happens when a kid struggles here?

The answer tells you more about a school’s culture than any ranking ever will. Some schools are built to support kids through difficulty. Others are built to move quickly and expect students to keep pace. Neither is inherently wrong, but one will be right for your child and one won’t be.

Think about what your kid actually needs. If they need to be known, go small. If they need rigorous college prep, follow the data. If faith matters to your family, find a community that shares it. And if your child is neurodivergent or has always felt a little out of step in traditional classrooms, pay close attention to Embrace Academy. The valley has needed a school like it for a while.