Arliya Martin accepted her high school diploma with relief and gratitude. It was her ticket to better-paying work, she felt, after getting kicked out of high school and toiling for eight years at factory jobs in Springfield, Louisiana, to support her children. "This is a new path for me," she said. But Martin didn't take any classes or pass any tests to receive her degree. She got it in July from a school where students can get a high school diploma for $465. Unlike public schools, formal homeschooling programs, or traditional private schools, nearly 9,000 private schools in Louisiana don't need state approval to grant degrees. Nearly every one was created to serve a single homeschooling family, but some have buildings, classrooms, teachers, and dozens of students.
While unapproved schools account for a small percentage of the state's students, those in Louisiana's off-the-grid school system are a rapidly growing example of the nation's continuing fallout from COVID-19: families disengaging from traditional education. US public school enrollment fell by more than 1.2 million students in the first two years of the pandemic. Many switched to private school or told their state they were homeschooling. Thousands of others could not be accounted for at all, according to an analysis by the AP and its partners. The students in Louisiana's off-the-grid school system aren't missing, but there's no way to tell what kind of education they're getting. Over 21,000 students are enrolled in the state's unapproved schools, nearly double the number from before the pandemic, according to data obtained through a public records request.
Little information is available about these schools, which the state calls "nonpublic schools not seeking state approval." The state Department of Education warns parents on its website that it cannot confirm whether these organizations even meet the legal definition of a school. "We didn't want to give parents or anyone a false sense that we knew anything about these schools," says one former state official, "that we could attest to their safety, that we could attest to their actual educational program, anything." To supporters of the system, avoiding state oversight is entirely the point. Advocates say Louisiana's unapproved schools are a natural extension of the doctrine of parental rights. Read the full story, which includes a visit to the school where Martin got her diploma, the Springfield Preparatory School.
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