In an effort to gauge the real barriers to opening a private school in the United States, a group of journalists stepped out of their reporting desks and into the role of school founders. Their experiment spanned three states—Arkansas, West Virginia and North Carolina—where each jurisdiction offered a distinct yet surprisingly low-cost pathway. By using only their own names, newsroom email addresses and a handful of required documents, they were able to register a legal school entity without any teaching experience or accreditation.
Arkansas: a $45 filing and a flag
The Arkansas portion of the test began in Little Rock, where the reporters visited a local flag shop to purchase the only mandated symbol for a private school. The store offered handheld sticks, wall-mounted banners and a formal gold-fringed flag. The team selected a modest flag that fit a small desktop base and added an Arkansas state flag, even though only public schools are required to display it. The total outlay was $49.45, covering both flags. With the Arkansas secretary of state website, they created a business entity called Curiosity Academy LLC, paid the $45 registration fee and received a certificate the same day. No background check, teaching credential or curriculum plan was requested. The Arkansas Department of Education confirmed it does not regulate private schools after they are established, and no inspection of the newsroom-turned-classroom took place.
While the school was never intended to enroll students, the state’s voucher-style Education Freedom Accounts program—launched in 2023—already allowed more than 220 private schools to receive public money, up from fewer than 100 in the program’s first year. In the same year, 143 microschools were approved to accept tax dollars, a rise from roughly 100 the prior school year. The reporters even filled out a short application to receive voucher funding, proposing a tuition ceiling of $7,208 per student, matching the amount each Arkansas student could draw from the program. Their request lingered for weeks, after which a department official suggested they could re-apply as a vendor or wait for the next microschool application window.
West Virginia: bypassing building inspections through microschool status
In Charleston, the journalists partnered with the news outlet Mountain State Spotlight. They drafted a simple notice of intent on notebook paper, listed middle-school grades, and delivered the slip to the West Virginia Department of Education. The state’s manager for private-school enrichment, Dustin Lambert, acknowledged receipt but asked for a fire-marshal safety letter—a requirement for brick-and-mortar private schools. Rather than undergo a costly inspection, the team learned that the state’s microschool definition only demands proof of a high-school diploma from the founder. By supplying a transcript and notifying the local Kanawha County school district, they sidestepped the safety-report hurdle entirely. Lambert confirmed that the department neither approves nor denies microschools based on operator qualifications, meaning the journalists could theoretically enroll an unlimited number of students without further state oversight.
North Carolina: turning a brewery into a classroom
Durham’s Ponysaurus Brewing Co. served as the backdrop for the third leg of the experiment. The brewery, already inspected for fire and health compliance, offered its premises as the prospective school site. Using the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s online portal, the reporters entered the brewery’s address, listed themselves as administrators and named the venture ProPublica-Assembly Academy. The portal required upload of the existing fire-occupancy and food-establishment inspection reports, both of which were already on file for the brewing operation. The system then displayed a confirmation screen indicating that a school identification number would be issued within three to five business days. Had the application been approved, the school would have joined at least 169 new private schools that opened in the state since the 2021-22 academic year.
Across all three states, the experiment highlighted a common theme: state statutes often focus on minimal administrative steps—payment of a filing fee, submission of an address and proof of a basic diploma—while leaving curriculum standards, teacher qualifications and student-learning assessments largely unchecked. In Arkansas, the lack of any post-approval inspection meant the newsroom was never examined for suitability as a learning environment. West Virginia’s microschool route effectively removed the building-safety gate. North Carolina’s reliance on existing commercial inspections allowed a brewery to double as a school without additional scrutiny.
The journalists’ findings raise questions about how public dollars flow into an ecosystem of private and microschools that operate with scant oversight. While the experiment was conducted solely as a journalistic probe—no students were enrolled and no public funds were claimed—it demonstrates that the procedural threshold for establishing a legal school can be met by anyone with a laptop, a modest fee and, in some cases, a flag.
