



The key to the alleged T. M. Landry scam can’t be the quality of the deception, because it was far from airtight. If anything, the story the school told about itself should have sparked immediate skepticism.



This isn’t hindsight speaking; I know from experience. I first encountered the school's viral videos last spring, and as a researcher on race and education, I felt compelled to learn more. What I found immediately raised my suspicions. Outside the videos themselves, the school offered little coherent explanation of how its students managed to win the collegiate lottery so often.

Many aspects of the school were unorthodox. Tuition was modest for a private school, and paid monthly, with students seemingly able to start and stop at any time from kindergarten to 12th grade in an unusual rolling-admissions format. While the Landrys were reliably vague about their instructional methods, the hints they dropped —no homework, no textbooks, and minimal parental involvement—didn’t conform with any successful teaching model I’d ever heard of. Nor did the couple have any prior teaching experience to suggest they should be capable of working educational wonders. Press coverage openly discussed T. M. Landry’s apparent dearth of courses, classrooms, and structured teaching—even while celebrating students’ sophisticated subject-matter specialties and high GPAs. Certain inconsistencies, such as how a school without defined courses could have GPAs, were never explained.

Read: The missing black students at elite American universities

Pictures of the school facility itself raised other questions. It was little more than an empty machine-shop floor, with folding chairs scattered across a barren concrete surface; children of all ages seemed to mingle freely. The single-room schoolhouses of yore looked elaborate by comparison. While academic achievement is not purely a reflection of school resources, this principle does have limits. Children can’t learn high-level subjects without some sort of formal instruction.



But for all the evidence pointing toward fraud, there was a sticking point: the students themselves. After all, how could fake schooling matriculate students at real Ivy League universities? Encountering the question for the first time, I was tempted toward wilder and wilder theories. Maybe the stars of the viral videos weren’t real students at all, and the whole thing had been a scheme for social-media clicks! But no: These were real kids, who really had enrolled in the nation’s top colleges. The institutions themselves frequently shared the videos, and the school'’ Facebook account showed Tracey and Michael Landry hobnobbing with admissions officials on Ivy League campuses.

Frankly, none of the pieces fit together. Still, whatever T. M. Landry was up to, the colleges and universities were fine with it, and presumably the admissions officers were doing their due diligence.



Except it now appears they weren’t.