If you want to know where education freedom in America is headed, look to Florida. Half the students in Florida are enrolled in something other than their zoned schools. One million are learning outside of district schools entirely. More than 500,000 are using state choice scholarships to access private schools or do “a la carte learning.”
Meanwhile, the number of private schools in Florida grew 31% between 2012-13 and 2022-23, the last year for which state data is available. That’s a net gain of 706 schools. For context, Florida produced more new private schools in 10 years than 39 states each have private schools, period.
School choice is not happening on this scale anywhere else in America.
And yet, when it comes to demand, it’s still not enough.
Last year, 41,000 students awarded private school choice scholarships from Florida’s two main programs never used them. To find out why, Step Up For Students surveyed their parents. What they told us forms the basis of our recent report, “Going With Plan B.”
The biggest reason parents didn’t use the scholarships: There weren’t any available seats at the private schools they wanted. A third of the respondents (34.7%) selected this option.
The second biggest reason: 19.7% indicated the scholarship amount wasn’t enough to make the school affordable, including 21.7% of low-income parents.
These findings conjure a tweak on those famous lines from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”: Florida parents see schools, schools everywhere. But thousands can’t enroll their kids in the ones they want.
That’s a challenge for Florida – and, as choice accelerates across the country, for other states as well.
For decades, the education freedom movement has worked hard to create, defend, and expand programs that give more families more options – and nobody has done it better than Florida. Of 1.3 million students nationwide participating in private school choice and education savings accounts programs, 40% are in the Sunshine State. But now that those programs are unleashing demand, it’s time the supply side got a little more attention, too.
Here, though, it’s important to note some other things the parents told us.
At the time they applied for the scholarships, more of them were satisfied than dissatisfied (55.0% to 30.2%) with the schools their children attended. And even without the scholarships, many found options they liked. In fact, satisfaction as a whole shifted higher with the schools the parents ultimately selected.
You read that right.
It doesn’t seem out of bounds to speculate that this is what happens when school choice becomes the new normal. As much as charter schools, choice scholarships, and education savings accounts have consumed the spotlight, Florida school districts have become massive generators of learning options, too. In the Miami-Dade district, more than 70% of students now attend choice schools, including more than 100 magnet schools, some of which rank among the best public schools in America.
In other words, Florida families have more and better options all over the place.
And that, in turn, may have led to higher expectations. Parents in Florida are no longer satisfied with a school that’s meh or merely better. They want a school that’s just right.
That may explain the final takeaway from our survey.
Two-thirds of the parents said they’d apply for the scholarships again, including 63.0% of those who switched school types, and 55.5% of those who were satisfied after doing so.
So yes, they found something better. But better enough?
For decades, choice supporters have made the case that parental choice will drive educational quality better from the bottom up than regulations can from the top down. I think the survey responses offer more evidence of that happening.
This brings us back to supply-side challenges.
It’s not hard to find schools in Florida that have been hamstrung by zoning and building codes that were built for last century’s education system. This is particularly true with newer models like microschools and hybrid homeschools that are popping up all over – or trying to – because more families want them.
In Sarasota, a microschool called Star Lab set up in the recreation center of a public housing complex so it could serve students who live there. As reported by education researcher Mike McShane, local authorities told the founder – an accomplished former public school teacher – that the facility would need a $97,000 sprinkler system to support an educational use.This, even though Star Lab would be serving fewer than 20 students in a single room with multiple exits straight outside.
In Vero Beach, the founders of Keystone Education Center, an alternative tutoring center for students with special needs, found themselves in a similar pickle. (Two of the four Keystone founders are also former public school teachers.) The church they rented met fire codes for parishioners. But local officials initially determined it did not meet the codes for educational use, even though the center would be serving far fewer students than the church was serving parishioners.
Fortunately, both of these cases had happy endings. And thankfully, Florida lawmakers have been chipping away at these problems. In 2023, they passed HB 443, which offered more zoning flexibility for tutoring operations. In 2024, they passed HB 1285, which gave private schools the power to set up “by right” in certain facilities, such as churches, instead of going through the process of getting a zoning change or special exception.
But challenges remain. Earlier this year, Teach Florida released an eye-opening report that documented double standards with local zoning for schools. Private schools are often forced to jump through expensive, time-consuming, and subjective hoops while public schools get a pass.
Thoughtful solutions for these barriers are within reach, even as policymakers rightly prioritize other pressing issues, such as better tracking and funding of students as they shift between education sectors.
On a related note, Stand Together Trust and Building Hope recently launched a national program to provide low-interest loans to qualified microschool founders. A similar, state-specific program would do wonders for Florida’s education entrepreneurs, many of whom are former public school teachers. It could be especially helpful to families if it were structured to spur even more high-quality, low-cost options.
No state in America has done more than Florida to try to deliver the full promise of education freedom to every family. Removing the barriers still blocking that full promise is fast becoming a vital next step.
Ron Matus is director, research and special projects, at Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that administers Florida’s choice scholarship programs.
