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An investigation at Baltimore city school found that administrators schemed to inflate enrollment, pressured teachers to change grades and scheduled students into classes that didn’t exist. Over a three-year period, about 100 students remained on the rolls but didn’t attend the school. The school operated evening and summer courses designed to allow students to make up credits, but the courses didn’t meet standards. In some cases, unqualified teachers were assigned to teach the classes, and in other cases, staff members were named as teachers of record for a class they never taught.

School officials in the city of Athens and Limestone County have conspired to obtain more public funding by claiming to enrol full-time private students in the system's virtual schools. The two school districts were improperly paid around $7 million in state education funding for the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years. By November 2017, more than 500 private school students were fraudulently enrolled in Athens Renaissance schools and over 50 students in Conecuh County.

64 candidates were unfairly enrolled at the University of California between 2013 and 2019 because of their personal or family ties to donors and academic staff. The state auditor reports that the university has undermined the fairness and integrity of its admissions process and has denied more qualified students the opportunity to be enrolled.

A federal lawsuit accuses New York City and thousands of other school districts of defrauding special needs students by depriving them of hands-on therapies during the pandemic. According to a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Education, city educators obtained the consent from special needs parents before swapping distance learning for hands-on therapies. Nevertheless, many parents have not received any services whatsoever, not even remote services.

The founder and director of the St. Louis College Prep Charter School pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud connected to a scheme to defraud and obtain education funds from the State of Missouri. From 2011 through 2018, he inflated student attendance numbers by falsely claiming regular school days and hours as summer school or remedial hours, siphoning $2,400,000 from a finite pool of education dollars.

An audit reveals that Indiana Virtual School and Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy wrongly received $68.7 million in state payments by improperly claiming students as enrolled between 2011 and 2019 even though they had no online course activity. The two schools operated under shared administration and declared 7,200 students last year. However, they closed last summer after national officials cut off funding.

A high-ranking Department of Education employee used his position to rip off $5 billion from the Government money that should have been spent on public schools. According to the State's anti-corruption, watchdog IBAC, for 7 years he covered his tracks by organizing fake invoices sent from companies owned by him and his friends and family that did not do any work.

A 2019 report showed that $6.5 billion in foreign gifts to U.S. institutions were not reported. To hold colleges and universities accountable and ensure that their reporting is full, accurate, and transparent, the Department of Education enforces Section 117 of the Higher Education, which requires colleges to report all gifts and contracts involving foreign sources worth $250,000 or more.

The “The School is Ours” program was launched in 2019 with the objective of improving the infrastructure and equipment of public basic education schools. The project focuses on promoting participatory management, with parents and students.