T.M. Landry “appears to have been a genuine incubator for success, particularly for self-reliant students willing to put faith in a nontraditional education model,” Mr. Pastorek wrote.

“No school can be everything to every student, T.M. Landry included,” he wrote.

But Couhig described its own work as incomplete. It did not receive requested information from law enforcement agencies regarding abuse allegations at the school, including police reports and witness statements quoted by The Times. And it did not obtain publicly available court documents showing that Mr. Landry pleaded guilty in 2012 to a count of battery and was sentenced to probation for beating a student.

Couhig interviewed five current students, two alumni, six staff members and the Landrys.

While the firm concluded that T.M. Landry was a nurturing place for students and that the Landrys were well intentioned, much of the report confirmed the Times’s reporting, including instances of transcript fraud and an episode in which a child was placed in a trash can.

Couhig said that while it “did not uncover evidence of systemic fraud, some errors and discrepancies were apparent in records, as were apparent efforts to show the students in the best light possible.”

The firm found an instance in which classes on students’ transcripts did not match with their college applications, and another in which grades were incorrectly reported as A’s instead of B’s. The Landrys also reported on college applications that students had placed in the top 10 and 20 percent of their class, rankings that Mr. Landry essentially acknowledged were made up. One student’s transcript showed all “advanced” courses that the Landrys later said should have been “honors;”; they blamed it on a clerical error. And of nine college recommendation letters reviewed by Couhig, seven contained “large or small portions of identical representations.”

Mr. Landry and Mr. Pastorek said they would notify colleges that had received applications with discrepancies, according to the report.

The report concluded that the discrepancies appeared “largely insignificant, potentially unimportant to an admissions officer, and appear to be explained by mere sloppiness.”