In Wisconsin, some private schools are almost entirely publicly funded. That because most of their students receive state-funded tuition vouchers, according to a new investigation by ProPublica.
Wisconsin has the oldest publicly-funded school voucher program in the nation.
ProPublica reporter Megan O’Matz found there’s little accountability for how these schools use taxpayer dollars. She zeroed in on one Milwaukee school: Atlas Preparatory Academy, which receives $4.3 million in voucher money for 357 students in grades K-12.
O'Matz found that the school is underperforming academically and is paying one of its board members as a school administrator to the tune of $150,000 per year. Unlike public schools, private schools are not required to have open meetings or records.
WUWM’s education reporter Katherine Kokal sat down with O'Matz to learn more about her reporting on the so-called "100% schools.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Katherine Kokal: I want to start with just defining what a "100% school" is and why it matters for those of us paying taxes.
Megan O'Matz: As we've been looking at this expanding universe of private schools, we notice that in some places there are private schools in which 100% of the students attending receive public money to pay for all or part of their tuition.
Here in Wisconsin, there were 39 schools that fell into that category of being "100% schools" during the 2025-26 school year. And we found together they were educating over about 7,900 children and taking in roughly $87 million from vouchers that were offered by the state. That's out of about $700 million the state is spending on vouchers altogether.
I started to look a little bit closer at Atlas Preparatory Academy in Milwaukee. It's a 100% school that received more than $4.3 million in voucher money that last school year for 357 students. Atlas Prep has low test scores and declining enrollment. It had earned the state's lowest performance rating that I found. So I was looking a little closer at its governing system, but also I want to know, for example, how a school like this that's 100% — all of the students are receiving a voucher — how that school operates differently than a public school.
Public school boards typically are elected and the board members serve without pay or with modest stipends. So in this private school, I found that its board chair also works as a paid administrator [of the school], earning over $150,000 a year. This dual role would be flatly prohibited in a public school because the school board basically oversees administrators. These two roles are incompatible.
Editor's note: Megan's reporting includes a written response from Atlas Prep regarding its conflict of interest policy, in which the school reports that "conflicted persons recuse themselves from the situation and do not vote or participate and the final decision that is made is strictly in the best financial interest of the school.”
So how do these 100% voucher schools fit into the balance of public and private education in Wisconsin?
I think it's just a good illustration or example. When you say, OK, here's a school in which every child is there because of tax dollars. Now compare what's going on with the public school down the street. And you can see that the public school down the street has to accept, for example, all children, anyone with disabilities. Whereas the private schools can be far more selective in who they accept.
In Wisconsin, all children are required to take standardized achievement tests, all public school children and all voucher school children. But at the private schools, parents can and do opt out of those tests. There's just so much less accountability and visibility in that regard.
So you have an illustration of two schools that may be very near each other, one public and another private school in which every child is supported by tax dollars, and yet they're operating under far different rules regarding accountability and transparency.
Do you have a question about education or how schools work in our area? Submit it here to WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal.
_
