The American public school system is being hollowed out by a policy that lets anyone with a Facebook page and a barn collect taxpayer dollars.

"I've got the West Virginia codebook, which governs public education, which is over 1,300 pages long. It's thicker than two Sears catalogs. Rules that govern homeschool and private school in West Virginia, those will fit on an index card."

Paul Hardesty, president of the West Virginia Board of Education

A decade ago, the state of Florida stripped a teacher named Tara Salute of her license after she had sex with a 16-year-old boy, a student in the district where she taught. She served probation and vanished from public education. Last fall, she founded Crystal River Learning Academy, a private school in her hometown, complete with a Facebook page, enrollment information, and photos posted to promote the new venture.

Florida did nothing to stop her. Under state law, the Department of Education explicitly lacks jurisdiction over private schools. The legislative intent not to regulate, control, approve, or accredit private educational institutions is, as the statute says, explicit.

The only reason Salute's school was caught was because a retired detective named Kat Powers recognized her name on social media and decided to post about it. Powers published screenshots of Salute's court records and mug shot online under the pseudonym "Petera Falk." Local media picked it up. The state finally revoked the school's scholarship eligibility after it had received $150 for a curriculum packet.

Citizens acting as vigilantes are the only accountability mechanism Florida's system provides.

ProPublica's investigation, published July 19, reveals the scope of what happens when states redirect billions in public education funding to private schools while simultaneously refusing to regulate them. The analysis covered 13 states that publish private school directories and offer public funding. At least 1,500 more private schools are listed today than five years ago, bringing the total to more than 9,600. In several states, nobody knows how many actually exist.

Arizona's Department of Education told ProPublica that state law prohibits the department from any role overseeing private schools, even as it spends millions of taxpayer dollars on voucher-style programs. The federal government does not keep a comprehensive accounting.

States allocated $10.6 billion last year to programs that can fund private schools, a 29 percent increase over the previous year. More than 1.5 million students are now enrolled in these programs across approximately 30 states. In Iowa, public funds subsidized 99 percent of all private school students last year.

Translation: the fastest-growing sector of American education is the one nobody is allowed to look inside.

The physical spaces these schools occupy defy conventional expectations of schooling. ProPublica found private schools operating in barns, farms, addiction treatment centers, co-working spaces, people's homes, and parks. A family in West Virginia opened a school at the family fun center they own, next to a waterpark, mini-golf course, and go-kart track.

In Phoenix, the Tyson Transformational Technologies Academy opened inside a strip mall. Mike Tyson lent his name for $1 a year and has appeared at school ceremonies giving motivational speeches to students. The Arizona state education department paid the school $231,973 in fiscal year 2025. The school's umbrella company, ELEV8, now operates nine schools across Florida, West Virginia, and Arizona.

ELEV8's founder, Daniel Puder, is a former MMA fighter and WWE wrestler who described in a podcast how his friend told him to start a school when Puder complained about turnover in public education. Puder did not graduate college. He was a special education student.

The company has held investor webinars titled "Discover the Investment Model Behind Our State-Funded Private Schools, with Mike Tyson." One Michigan-based company that encourages churches to tap into public funds refers to voucher programs in its promotional videos as "God's new gold mine."

This is not the privatization of public education. This is the commercialization of it.

The backgrounds of people running these schools often simply do not matter. Lisa Hamm, who changed her name to Lisa Helton after moving from Ohio to Florida, was the former superintendent of a Cincinnati charter school. She and the school's treasurer were indicted on 26 felony counts, including theft in office, tampering with evidence, and unauthorized use of property.

State audits alleged that Hamm used public school funds for Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber concerts, a Cirque du Soleil show, Nutrisystem weight loss meals for staff lunches, and arena suites. After serving her sentence in 2014, then-Ohio Auditor Dave Yost called her spending a "looting that would make even a pirate blush, with children and taxpayers as victims."

Her educator license was permanently revoked. She moved to Tampa, changed her name, and founded American Education International, which registered as a private school in Florida and was approved to participate in the state's voucher program. Over three years, Helton's business collected $291,165 in public scholarship funds.

Florida's voucher management organization, Step Up For Students, said it was not aware of any determination by state authorities that would have prohibited her from founding or operating the school.

The system is not malfunctioning. It is working exactly as designed.

What makes this different from ordinary political disagreement over education policy is the total absence of guardrails. Private schools accepting public funds can still refuse to admit students with disabilities, since unlike public schools, they are not required to accommodate them. Religious schools commonly expel students who identify as gay or whose parents are gay. An Alabama school that opened last fall says it will expel students who have HIV, gonorrhea, or syphilis.

Several private schools in Ohio and Virginia permit corporal punishment even though those states ban it in public schools. Some schools explicitly state on their websites that they are permitted to discriminate on the basis of religion.

Students who stand to benefit most from educational choice, including those with special needs, are frequently locked out. The very populations politicians say these programs are designed to serve cannot access them.

Earlier this year, a handful of West Virginia legislators tried to add basic safeguards, including requiring private schools to give standardized tests and report results. The proposals failed. The legislators who supported them were then ousted in the state's May primaries, rebuked by the pro-voucher governor and by voters who backed the governor's preferred candidates.

Paul Hardesty, the president of the state board of education and a critic of the regulations, said the proposals did not pass and then the people who pushed them got primary-challenged. The threat to children's education is real and the accountability mechanisms are nonexistent.

A federal tax-credit program signed into law by President Trump provides the first-ever national plan to fund K-12 private schools. This is being sold as educational freedom, a right of parents to choose the best environment for their children. And for some families, vouchers do open doors that were previously closed.

But freedom without standards is just abandonment. The system being built is one where a retired detective's Facebook post is the primary mechanism for catching a sexual predator running a school, where a charter school superintendent convicted of misusing taxpayer funds can collect more taxpayer funds in the next state over, and where the rules governing who can teach your children in a publicly-funded setting fit on an index card.

A Tulane University economist who studies voucher programs told ProPublica that private schools are all over the place, sometimes in places you don't even realize, and that they are not even advertised. That is the point. You are not supposed to know they are there until someone like Kat Powers notices, or until a ProPublica investigation forces the information into daylight.

The question is not whether private schools should exist. The question is why taxpayer money is flowing into institutions that are legally insulated from the kind of scrutiny we apply to any other use of public funds, including institutions run by people whose last educational venture ended in felony convictions.

Nobody seems willing to ask what happens when the vigilante detective does not exist.