What Does It Take To Open A Private School? A Group Of Journalists Found Out

Across the United States the educational landscape is changing as the school choice movement gains traction and school voucher programs are adopted in more states.  

The nonprofit newsroom ProPublica has been reporting on how public money is funding private education. Earlier this month, ProPublica published a series of stories about how they were able to open schools in two states. That includes opening a microschool in West Virginia alongside Mountain State Spotlight.  

ProPublica reporter Jennifer Smith Richards spoke with Chris Schulz about the experience and what she says it says about modern education. 

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.   

Schulz: I think it’s important for people to know that this is part of a larger reporting project that you’ve taken on with your colleagues looking at how public money is funding private schools. Can you just briefly tell me a little bit about this project that you’ve undertaken? 

Smith Richards: My colleagues at ProPublica and I have spent the better part of the year really looking at states’ policies and programs that send public money, tax money, and set it aside for private education. That could be going to a private school and paying tuition there, could be homeschooling or going to a micro school. But we’ve really been looking at the way that states have implemented these programs and to what degree they are regulated, to what degree states actually oversee the education that students are getting in those schools. 

Schulz: If there is a broad takeaway so far from your reporting, what have you learned about this exchange? 

Smith Richards: I think a couple big things have come up. One is simply that there is a lot more money going toward private education than ever before. We now have, I think, upwards of 30 states that have some sort of program that sends public dollars to private education, which is a significant change from decades ago. So I’d say that there are simply more programs that are sending public money to private schools. And there are more private schools.  

One of the things we did at the beginning of our process here was try to quantify how many new private schools were opening, largely in response to the availability of that public money. We looked across 13 states that had programs that did allow voucher-like programs largely, including West Virginia, and looked to see if we could count how many new private schools there were. There are now 1,500 more private schools operating across just 13 states than there were five years ago, which is a really significant number of new schools that parents are choosing from. And that’s not even counting homeschooling and, in some states, micro schools. So there’s been a big shift.  

That’s been a big push of our reporting, to understand what that shift has been and what it means. Now, as we were reporting on just the growth, the proliferation of private schools, what we came to understand is that many states have designed their programs in such a way that they do not regulate or oversee private schools. We have very limited insight into what students are learning in those schools, who is teaching them, who founded the schools. States are choosing not to interact and put up any sort of barriers to who can come in and open up a private school in a community. 

Schulz: You’ve done such detailed reporting on these state-level systems in Arkansas and other states. Why did your team feel it was necessary to take the extra step to apply for your own schools to try and open your own schools? 

Smith Richards: Really it was an idea that was born out of just a simple brainstorming meeting where a couple of reporters and editors, we were talking about ways to continue this reporting and things that we were noticing. There were no barriers to, or restrictions on, who could start a private school. And there was a moment where one of our editors said, “Could we start a private school?” And we sort of laughed it off at first, like, “Maybe we could?” but then started seriously thinking about it and saying, “This would be really informative to us to understand the process. This actually is a good reporting exercise.” And so we started talking about what it would take, what we would need to do. Could we actually do it? And researching what the rules are in the states that have voucher or voucher-like programs. We pretty quickly came to the conclusion that we thought we could, we thought we could be successful and it would be a very hands-on way to experience what it takes to enter this sort of new private school market. 

Schulz: What were the results of this experiment? 

Smith Richards: This is the big spoiler. We were successful. We ended up opening – not to students, just to be clear, we had no intention of actually enrolling students and actually running a school. But we did end up successfully founding two private schools, one in the state of Arkansas and one in West Virginia. We got pretty far along in the process in North Carolina but really got held up by a technicality. It wasn’t something that had to do with our qualifications as potential school operators or instructors. It had to do with the specific type of fire marshal inspection and safety inspection. We chose to try to open our school in a brewery in North Carolina. It ended up being a bit more complicated in terms of the space that we chose. The ultimate results, we were successfully able to found two private schools as people who have, frankly, no business running a K-12 school. We don’t have backgrounds as teachers, we have never run schools before. We have no expectation that we would be successful in educating children. We simply are not qualified. But that did not stop us. 

Schulz: You found quite easy success based on what you reported. Was that a result of the choices that you made in the states that you pursued this in? And how did you make that choice of where to try this out? 

Smith Richards: We examined the rules and regulations for new private schools in a number of states. And there were some states where there simply were no rules. One of those states is Arkansas. We selected Arkansas really because of that. There really wasn’t anything that spelled out what the process should be to open a school there. What we did was establish a business and then that created us as an entity and we existed. That was it. So we chose Arkansas, I think, for that reason, that it was a fairly straightforward thing. There wasn’t going to be a requirement.  

We looked to other states that had what seemed like similarly low regulations and requirements for opening a school, that maybe didn’t impose restrictions on who could do it. But I want to be clear that most of the states don’t have any sort of restrictions about who can be a private school owner or operator. I think there may only be one state that has some sort of requirement that you have an educational background if you’re going to get into the private school business, but most don’t. So we had a lot of states to choose from, to be honest.  

We became pretty interested in in West Virginia because we, in researching West Virginia, realized that very little was required to sort of announce yourself as a private school. We had to provide the state a letter that says our names – and we used our real names just to put a fine point on that – our names, the name of our school, what grades we would serve, when we expected to open and where we would be located. That really seemed like a pretty easy bar to clear. So we selected West Virginia for that reason. We selected North Carolina in part because the process was all online, very simple, straightforward. The other states, the states weren’t asking very much of us. They weren’t asking us to be, for example, certified teachers. They weren’t asking us to be successful business owners in any other right or to demonstrate financial solvency. Most states just simply didn’t require that. So that’s a very long-winded answer to how we ended up in these states. We had a lot of states to choose from in terms of what they were asking of us, and so we picked a handful. 

Schulz: So in this process, what stood out to you about West Virginia? 

Smith Richards: There was an element of surprise in West Virginia. We understood pretty clearly what it was going to take to start a private school. We felt we did. But we immediately ran up against some friction in West Virginia when the West Virginia Department of Education asked us for our inspection report, a fire marshal inspection report, which we didn’t have. Our school was going to be located in the Mountain State Spotlight newsroom which had never been inspected as far as we know as a school before. So we sort of pushed the pause button on that, pumped the brakes, and started thinking about what our options are.  

That was sort of where the surprise came in, because we realized that even though the West Virginia Department of Education does have this role of monitoring private schools that are opening in the state, it has no role in regulating micro schools. We were able in that moment where we didn’t have a fire inspection to pivot and say, “You know what, we’re going to be a micro school instead.” And we were able to establish the micro school as a micro school, which could enroll an unlimited number of students and did not require a fire safety inspection. That really was very surprising in that moment, to realize we could bypass the already scant restrictions that were placed on private schools operating in the state and could enroll as many students as we wanted. 

Schulz: Can you talk a little bit more about that experience, about running into this issue and then basically being shown the door to another pathway so quickly? 

Smith Richards: In West Virginia, nobody regulates micro schools. There really isn’t a lot of information out there about how to start a micro school in the state. There’s nothing to guide you. Now, we initially went to the West Virginia Department of Education thinking we were going to establish ourselves as a private school and they do have that role and they were immensely helpful. They recognized that we were reporters and journalists doing this and they viewed their role as one of an assistance agency. They have a responsibility to work with prospective private schools.  

That said, this micro school option is a lawful option in West Virginia. And though the department did not steer us toward that, there is no real other source of information about micro schools. They did pass on to us kind of a one or two page document that outlines what the law says about micro schools in West Virginia. There simply isn’t anywhere else to go for information, so I just want to be clear that the West Virginia Department of Education was clear to us that they do not have any oversight responsibility over micro schools. The law sort of speaks for itself and they did provide us the information that was in law. 

Schulz: I wanted to give you an opportunity to just kind of reflect on this experience. You used the word surprise a couple times in speaking about the process here in West Virginia. What has been your takeaway from now having opened two schools? 

Smith Richards: We’ve spent the better part of the year reporting and seeing how other people had done it and wondering how they did it. How did somebody who had, for example, a criminal history of misuse of public funds, how did somebody who had no experience running a school, end up opening a school that served really vulnerable students? Why was this so easy for them to do? Why didn’t anything stop them from opening a school? It was so valuable for us to actually go through the process ourselves. And instead of being curious about and wondering how easy is it really, we found out. It actually was quite easy.  

In West Virginia, ultimately, all I really had to do was alert the county school board that this micro school, the ProPublica Mountain State Spotlight Curiosity Academy had established and I had to hand over my transcripts. The state of West Virginia does require micro school educators to have at least a high school diploma. I couldn’t find my high school diploma, I couldn’t find evidence of that, so I was able to get my college transcripts and ship those over. That experience of the ease with which we just said simply, “We’re a micro school now. Here are my college transcripts,” and that was the end of it. And we were an official micro school. That was surprising and it was a reporting experience. It was something that really did inform our understanding of why  we have seen so many schools open over the past five years. It simply isn’t very cumbersome, frankly, to establish as a school, as a private school in many states. 

Schulz: Do you see this as an issue, or a cause for concern, something that should be looked at not only by the public, but by political leaders as well? 

Smith Richards: I think it’s something that’s important for people to understand. What you don’t want is for people to think that a state or a county is somehow vetting people who are opening schools and is monitoring the quality. I think that a lot of parents would be surprised to learn that is not the case. So I think it’s really important for people to even understand what it means to be a private school in many states, what is required of private schools in many states. I think that that’s sort of the first thing, is just knowledge and understanding.  

But part of the conversation includes the fact that we are devoting, we are choosing, as in many states, to devote tax dollars to private education and to private schools, which are regulated and overseen in a very different way than public schools are. I think it’s fair for people, and people are looking at the reporting that we’ve done and saying, “Are we asking enough of where our public dollars are going and how they’re being spent and what they’re being spent on?” 

Schulz: Is there anything that I haven’t given you a chance to discuss about this experience, or is there’s something that we touched on that you’d like to highlight at this time? 

Smith Richards: I’ll bring up one other piece of our reporting that I think has been informative for people, and particularly in West Virginia. We’ve done some reporting on how students with disabilities experience these voucher-like programs. What we found is that in most states, there are very few opportunities for students with disabilities to attend a private school using public money. And the reason by and large is that private schools choose not to serve students with disabilities because they can. Public schools do not have that option. All public schools are required to admit and serve students with disabilities. Private schools are not. And in talking with parents in West Virginia, we learned that the problem is especially acute there. We had a number of parents tell us, “There simply is no private school that I could go to. Even if I wanted to use a Hope Scholarship to go to a private school, there’s nowhere to go.” We talked to parents who had gone through the exercise of calling every single private school within an hour radius of them and being told no over and over and over. “No, we don’t serve students with that kind of disability,” which is especially hard. So in a state like West Virginia, where theoretically the scholarship is open to any student who wants to use it, there’s a whole segment of students who are not able to access it. School choice for them in West Virginia is really about the school’s choice and not about the parents’ choice. I think that’s important to think about is that, we were able to open a school. We could choose whether or not we wanted to serve students with disabilities, we can make that decision. And it’s really consequential for a lot of people in West Virginia who might like to attend a private school or a micro school, but find they can’t.  

I think perhaps there’s a temptation to frame our experiment as maybe silly, a bit of a caper. But I do want your listeners to know that we took a great deal of care in thinking out how to do this. We very much walked through the front door. We used our real names, our real e-mail addresses, our news organization names were in the name of the school; again, the ProPublica Mountain State Spotlight Curiosity Academy. We  basically made a show of the fact that we were journalists: wrote our intention, our notice of intent letter to start a private school, like literally on a piece of notebook paper and ripped it out of the notebook, leaving those crispy edges and drove it over to the Department of Education, walking through the building with somebody who was, we had a photographer, a video journalist with us rolling the whole time, cameras rolling. We weren’t being sneaky about the fact that news organizations were attempting to found a private school. And I think the state, the West Virginia Department of Education was aware that we were journalists. But there was nothing in state law that allows them to say, “We don’t think you’re qualified to run a school,” or, “We don’t think the location you’ve chosen is suitable for kids.” Really, they have a very narrow ability to deny someone the opportunity to run a private school. In our case, it was pretty simple. We didn’t have a fire marshal inspection. That’s a pretty low bar when we’re talking about educating young people and caring for children.