ProPublica

Delta Institute joined a surge of new private schools in Arkansas, mirroring a national proliferation. New schools are opening at a fast clip as state legislatures set aside more public money for parents to spend at private schools, without meaningful oversight. There were about 100 private schools in Arkansas in 2023, state records show. Now there are about 220. That doesn’t count the 100 or so microschools in the mix—a version of the one-room schoolhouse that wasn’t tracked or publicly funded before. But even with that boom, Arkansas has largely chosen not to regulate private or microschools or monitor what’s happening inside them. Arkansas is so hands-off that it only requires private schools to conduct regular fire drills, keep immunization records, and display an American flag on a flagpole. It doesn’t review schools’ curriculum or the backgrounds and capabilities of their operators. Anyone is free to open one, including Morrison. Known to parents and students as Dr. Tracy, she wasn’t a licensed educator and had never run a school before. Her resume states that she holds a doctorate in occupational therapy and cognitive neuroscience from Washington University in St. Louis. The university said that the degree is only in occupational therapy. The Delta Institute didn’t look much like a school — it operated in a white colonial house set down a gravel driveway off a country road, its bedrooms transformed into classrooms. But it had seemed like the answer that parents of students with disabilities, including autism, were desperately seeking. Families said they put their faith in Morrison, who presented herself as an expert in autism and ADHD. “I am the best,” she texted one parent.