The reporting experiment demonstrates how easy it can be to open private schools that might then access public money. No credentials or background checks required.

Our reporting has shown how easily people — some with questionable backgrounds — have founded their own private schools in barns, strip malls and other places. That led us to an experiment: If the hur...

Private school requirements vary wildly across states. Take our quiz to find out just how easy starting one can be.

Our reporting has shown how easily people — some with questionable backgrounds — have founded their own private schools in barns, strip malls and other places. That led us to an experiment: If the hur...

Mary “Tracy” Morrison ordered students to scrub floors and urged them to attack a classmate. Few records exist of incidents at The Delta Institute for the Developing Brain, a private school with littl...

Mary “Tracy” Morrison ordered students to scrub floors and urged them to attack a classmate. Few records exist of incidents at The Delta Institute for the Developing Brain, a private school with littl...

As private schools proliferate, states are choosing a hands-off approach to regulating them. The backgrounds of school founders — sometimes with criminal histories — often don’t matter

One of the few requirements for Arkansas private schools is that they have an American flag and a flagpole. But millions in state funds go to the largely unmonitored schools while complaints about saf...

Two men promised a $1.1 million 3D printer could fix Cairo, Illinois’ housing crisis. More than a year later, the one duplex it printed still isn’t finished. And the more we asked questions, the weird...

Under Secretary Linda McMahon, the work of the Office for Civil Rights, which aims to protect students from discrimination, is cloaked in secrecy.

Since Trump returned to office, the Education Department’s civil rights office has not resolved a single racial harassment investigation. It sends a message that “people impacted by racial discriminat...

Education Secretary Linda McMahon is bringing about a new era in education — and perhaps the end of public schools as we know them.

Since Trump returned to office, the Education Department’s civil rights office has not resolved a single racial harassment investigation. It sends a message that “people impacted by racial discriminat...

Since Trump returned to office, the Education Department’s civil rights office has not resolved a single racial harassment investigation. It sends a message that “people impacted by racial discriminat...

Oklahoma has spent years reshaping public schools to integrate lessons about Jesus and encourage pride in America’s history. By the time the second Trump administration began espousing its “America Fi...

The Oklahoma Supreme Court stuck down the revised 2025 social studies standards, finding their approval violated the Open Meetings Act.

Have you recently filed a civil rights complaint or do you have a pending case? We need your help to get a full picture of how the dismantling of the Office for Civil Rights is affecting students, par...

The U.S. Education Department is handing off some of its biggest grant programs to other federal agencies as the Trump administration accelerates its plan to shut down the department.

Oklahoma has spent years reshaping public schools to integrate lessons about Jesus and encourage pride in America’s history. By the time the second Trump administration began espousing its “America Fi...

Oklahoma has spent years reshaping public schools to integrate lessons about Jesus and encourage pride in America’s history. By the time the second Trump administration began espousing its “America Fi...

ProPublica needs your help to track how the upheaval of public education is affecting schools and colleges in your community. Take a few minutes to join our source network and help guide our coverage.

Venezuelan immigrants signed up for a Trump-promoted app called CBP Home, which promised a safe and easy way to leave the country, and prepared to leave on their given departure dates. Those dates hav...

The Trump administration has made a rapid succession of hires and decisions at the Department of Education that could spur profound changes in how schools operate and children learn. Here’s what to kn...

Under Trump, the Department of Education has been bringing in activists hostile to public schools. It could mean a new era of private and religious schools boosted by tax dollars — and the end of publ...

Under Trump, the Department of Education has been bringing in activists hostile to public schools. It could mean a new era of private and religious schools boosted by tax dollars — and the end of publ...

ProPublica obtained records from the Department of Agriculture that detail the millions of pounds of food, down to the number of eggs, that never reached food banks because of the administration’s cut...

Retired officer Jeffrey Kriv acknowledged repeatedly lying under oath to avoid paying dozens of speeding and other traffic tickets. Prosecutors have dropped at least 92 cases in which Kriv was a key w...

Citing concerns about DEI, the U.S. Department of Education has halted funding for programs that support students with combined hearing and vision loss in eight states. “How low can you go?” one advoc...

Mayor Jacob Frey said he was ‘monitoring reports of horrific violence’ in south Minneapolis. A massive police presence was at the scene.

Have you recently filed a civil rights complaint or do you have a pending case? We need your help to get a full picture of how the dismantling of the Office for Civil Rights is affecting students, par...

A retired gas industry executive, a shadowy “grassroots” group and a controversial media company are spreading misinformation while turning residents against a proposed solar farm — and each other.

Declining school enrollment has left 30% of Chicago public schools at least half-empty. The city’s failure to address this problem has come at a high cost to the district — and its students.

The legislation comes after a ProPublica-Chicago Tribune investigation revealed that even though state law bans schools from fining students directly, districts skirt the law by calling on police to i...

The Garrison School is part of a special education district that had students arrested at the highest rate in the country. It had pledged to change how it disciplines kids after a ProPublica-Chicago T...

The Garrison School is part of a special education district that had students arrested at the highest rate in the country. It had pledged to change how it disciplines kids after a ProPublica-Chicago T...

The Trump administration is subverting the traditional priorities of the department’s decimated civil rights office by making discrimination investigations practically impossible — instead enforcing i...