This story was originally published by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.
By Jennifer Smith Richards, Megan O’Matz, Mollie Simon and Jennifer Berry Hawes, ProPublica
A decade ago, the state of Florida stripped a teacher of her license for sexual abuse of a 16-year-old boy. Last year, she opened a private school there with ease. Her name and photo were on her new school’s website and details of her case were easy to find with an online search.
The state also knew that a transplanted Midwesterner had been fired from her Cincinnati charter school, following felony charges related to misuse of public funds, and had been banned from teaching or running schools in Ohio. Yet Florida did not stop her from starting a private school and collecting public money.
As private schools proliferate in Florida and across the country, fueled by taxpayer dollars, states are choosing not to closely regulate who is operating them or to oversee student safety and achievement, a ProPublica investigation found.
The backgrounds of school founders and employees often simply don’t matter. In Arizona, for example, “state law prohibits our department from a role overseeing private schools,” a spokesperson for the state Department of Education told ProPublica.
In 2024, Arizona’s top education official lauded Mike Tyson, the heavyweight boxer who served time in prison for rape, for his involvement in launching a private school that bore his name, calling Tyson “a champion of education.”
Some states, including Arizona, cannot say how many private schools exist or where they operate despite spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on voucher-style programs. The federal government also does not keep a comprehensive accounting.
ProPublica analyzed data from 13 states of varying sizes that do publish private school directories and offer public funding to these types of schools, and found that at least 1,500 more are listed today than were five years ago — bringing the total to more than 9,600.
When public money is available, most private schools take advantage of that funding. In several states, all or nearly all students at some private schools pay tuition with public dollars. For instance, public funds subsidized 99% of all private school students in Iowa this past school year, the third year the program was available.
An average of 100 new private schools have launched in Florida each of the last five school years. West Virginia, a state with fewer school-age students than are enrolled in Chicago Public Schools, has gained about 40 new private schools. And in the three years since Arkansas began allowing students to get about $7,000 annually toward tuition, about 120 new private schools opened.
It has been a conservative goal for decades to diminish the role of public schools and privatize American education. Now about 30 states have some version of a program that allows families to spend public money on private school tuition. EdChoice, a group that advocates for these plans, estimated that more than 1.5 million students are taking advantage of them.
“I’ve got the West Virginia codebook, which governs public education, which is over 1,300 pages long,” said Paul Hardesty, the president of the West Virginia Board of Education and a critic of the state’s permissive private school regulations. “It’s thicker than two Sears catalogs. Rules that govern home school and private school in West Virginia — those will fit on an index card.”
Barns, Go-Karts and Mike Tyson
For many, private school evokes images of elite academies, manicured campuses and plaid Catholic-school uniforms. “But that’s not the vast majority of private schools,” said Douglas Harris, a Tulane University economist who studies voucher programs.
In this recent expansion, private schools have opened in farms and barns, addiction treatment centers, co-working spaces, people’s homes and parks, ProPublica’s review of 13 states found. A West Virginia family opened a school at the family fun center they operate. It’s next to the waterpark, mini golf course and go-kart track.
In Phoenix, the Mike Tyson-branded Tyson Transformational Technologies Academy, operating in a strip mall, was opened as part of a chain of schools for foster children, unhoused or expelled students created by former MMA fighter Daniel Puder. Tyson lent his name to the academy for $1 a year. Tuition is free to families: the state of Arizona paid the school $231,973 in fiscal year 2025.
Once schools are open and accepting tax funds, few states then regulate what is taught, what qualifications employees should have or what funds may be spent on. Several private schools in Ohio and Virginia permit paddling as discipline even though those states outlaw corporal punishment in public schools. It’s common for both new and established religious schools to refuse to admit or to expel students who say they’re gay. Many schools decline to enroll students with disabilities.
A Conviction, Then a Fresh Start
The lack of private-school oversight is built straight into the law in most of the states ProPublica studied. Florida, for example, advertises that it does not have jurisdiction over private schools.
ProPublica discovered that a woman named Lisa Helton running a private school in Tampa was once named Lisa Hamm — the former superintendent of a Cincinnati charter school who was indicted on 26 felony counts including theft in office. She entered into an arrangement to accept conviction on three lesser counts. Ohio permanently revoked her educator license; she moved to Florida, changed her name, and founded a school that has collected $291,165 in public scholarship funds over three years.
The Teacher, the Teen and the Detective
In Crystal River, Florida, community members discovered that a newly opened private school’s founder, Tara Salute, had lost her teaching license in 2015 after being prosecuted for sexual abuse of a minor. The Florida Department of Education later found the school had used a fraudulent teaching certificate to qualify for scholarship money and revoked its funding eligibility — but the school continues to operate and enroll students.
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