At “Quasi-Public” Private Schools, 100% of Students Get Tuition Vouchers. There’s Almost No Accountability.

ProPublica found a growing class of private schools funded almost entirely by public voucher dollars—effectively operating as public institutions with public money, but governed as private enterprises with minimal oversight. In Wisconsin alone, thirty-nine such schools educated nearly eight thousand students in the most recent school year, drawing roughly eighty-seven million dollars in state vouchers. Atlas Preparatory Academy in Milwaukee exemplifies the pattern. Despite receiving four point three million dollars in voucher funding for three hundred fifty-seven students, the school carries a one-star rating—the state's lowest—for consistently failing to meet expectations. Yet private voucher schools face far fewer accountability requirements than traditional public schools. They're not required to serve students with disabilities. They don't have to open board meetings to the public or report standardized test scores. At Atlas, ProPublica's reporting revealed the board chair drawing over one hundred fifty thousand dollars annually in salary and benefits, while his personal accounting firm simultaneously billed the school for over eighty-seven thousand dollars in contracts. This dual arrangement—a board member profiting directly from school funds through multiple revenue streams—would be prohibited at a public school. The result: quasi-public schools that spend taxpayer money but operate with private-school secrecy, leaving parents and regulators without meaningful access to financial records or performance data.

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