Florida
U.S.
Rank
- Opportunity
- Innovation
- Policy Environment
The choice friendly Sunshine state is still hospitable to charters, with many districts utilizing the tool to improve their offerings and compete. With a growing population, wide variety of providers, some resources available for capital, and a pro-growth attitude, it’s no surprise student achievement continuously rises.
Law passed: 1996
Most recently amended: 2019
Number of charter schools: 680
Number of charter students: 329,216
Cap on the number of schools allowed:? No
Virtual charters allowed? Yes
AUTHORIZERS: Local districts are the main authorizers, although as of 2019, state universities can authorize lab schools and community college boards of trustees can authorize charter technical career centers. Denied applicants appeal to the state board of education.
GROWTH: The state provides a fast track to growth for high-performing schools, but the process for starting a new charter is onerous and highly regulated. The application process can discourage operators from opening new schools. Enrollment has increased more than 38,000 students and 26 schools since 2018.
OPERATIONS: Schools are exempt from most regulations that apply to traditional schools, but since local districts are authorizers, autonomy is limited.
EQUITY: Funding follows the same formula as all other public schools minus administrative fees retained by the school board. A positive legislative change in 2019 with HB 7123. It requires that locally voter approved operational millage must be shared proportionally with all public schools in the district, including public charter schools, beginning July 1, 2019. Florida also provided $158.2 million to its charter school capital outlay fund.
The Sunshine state is home to five private school choice programs that include the best-funded tax credit scholarship program in the country, and strengthened and expanded parental options in 2019-2020, making it the top ranked state.
Voucher
Family Empowerment Program
Florida’s Family Empowerment Program was created in 2019 and expanded in 2020. This new program includes middle income families, an important addition for expanding education opportunities for all. The program was created to alleviate the waitlist of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program while expanding school choice options for thousands of other low- and middle-income residents. Students are eligible if their household income is below the 300% poverty level.
Voucher
John M. McKay Scholarships for Students with Disabilities Program
Florida’s John M. McKay Scholarships for Students with Disabilities Program was enacted in 1999, making it the nation’s first school voucher program for students with special needs. The Florida legislature expanded the program in 2000. Vouchers are worth up to the same amount public schools would have spent on a participating child.
Tax-Credit Scholarship
Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program
This tax-credit scholarship program was enacted in 2001 and serves students from low-income households. Florida provides a 100 percent tax credit on corporate income taxes and insurance premium taxes for donations to non-profit scholarship organizations that help low-income and foster children attend the school of their choice. The total budget is currently $559.1 million. The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program is the largest program in terms of student participation and budget. More than 108,000 students received scholarships under this program in 2019.
Tax Credit Scholarship
Hope Scholarship Program
Hope Scholarships may be used by students who are victims of bullying or are physically attacked in school. This program allows purchasers of motor vehicles to contribute their vehicle sales tax to fund private school scholarships. These students may also transfer to other public school districts.
Education Saving Account
Gardiner Scholarship Program
Florida’s Gardiner Scholarship Program provides parents funds to pay for a variety of educational services for their children, including private school tuition, tutoring, online education, curriculum, therapy, textbooks, digital devices, courses at eligible post-secondary educational institutions in Florida, specialized after-school programs, transition services, fees for the annual evaluation of the educational progress of the child, fees for home education programs, and other defined educational services. Students may also purchase services, including part-time courses, from public schools.
Uses best practices to collect data and evaluate teacher prep programs, which the state further puts to use in ensuring that teachers have content knowledge to teach.
The Florida Department of Education does not require specific digital learning standards or models, but does provide resources for technology integration in schools such as technology toolkits, webinars, professional development, and digital learning and teaching best practices.
Florida has a Digital Classroom Program. In 2014, The Florida Department of Education was required to create the Digital Classroom 5-Year Strategic Plan to help districts implement digital classrooms. The plan was in effect from 2014-2019.
Florida Virtual School is one of the nation’s largest statewide virtual schools and since their opening in 1997, there have been 4.6 million semesters completed. FLVS is fully accredited, granting diplomas to full-time students, but also offers part time enrollment for supplemental courses. Before the pandemic, there were over 200,000 students enrolled. In 2019, there were 762 full-time graduates.
Florida’s Seminole County Public Schools and The School Board of Broward County, Florida are members of the Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools, providing digital learning opportunities to more than 330,000 students. The League of Innovative Schools is a network of school leaders in 114 districts in 34 states that aim to enhance and scale digital learning opportunities for students across the nation.
Bandwidth: “98.3% of students in Florida can access the Internet at speeds of 100 kbps per student, and many students are connected at higher speeds. But there is still work to be done. 42,508 students still need more bandwidth for digital learning.”
The Sunshine State has many opportunities for personalized learning, but there is still no statewide effort behind the movement.
The District Innovation School of Technology Program enables participating schools to implement blended learning models, which the legislation states “must include major components such as differentiated instruction, data-driven placement, flexible scheduling, differentiated teaching, and self-paced learning.” Schools have the freedom to choose between three blended learning models: flipped classroom model, flex model, and rotation model.
The Principal Autonomy Program Initiative is legislation that gives principals more authority to implement their own vision on how their schools can improve. This program gives school leaders the opportunity to make decisions based on what works best for their individual students, and they have more authority over areas such as curriculum, instructional models, budget, and staffing.
Florida’s Competency-Based Education Pilot Program is a five-year program in five districts that is set to expire at the end of the 2020-2021 school year. Lawmakers were considering expanding the pilot program to all districts. Under the proposed law, the pilot would be renamed Mastery-Based Education Program, and would allow schools to use an alternative grading scale. Unfortunately, it passed in the house but did not make it out of the committee in the Senate.
Florida was among the leaders in state responses for education to the COVID-19 crisis, actively demanding that all students continue to learn. That is owing in part to the existence of a statewide program, the Florida Virtual School, which has long been a provider of quality online education in the state and to the existence of numerous school leaders who are accustomed to challenges and choices. The state also created a site with best practices for online learning.
Florida’s Department of Education highlighted some of the best district efforts to respond to the pandemic, offering a model for other districts to follow.
Florida distributed devices to students who needed them in order to allow for distance learning to start successfully on March 30th.
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Ron DeSantis (R)
First term began in 2019 (two-term limit)
Governor Ron DeSantis is a national leader for education opportunities for families. He’s strongly pro-Innovation and opportunity with students at the center of his decisions and has quickly proven to be a strong successor to the state’s previous two governors — Rick Scott and Jeb Bush. His open support of school choice may have even been one of the contributing factors for his narrow win in the Florida Governor’s race where he received noticeable support from minority women- potential “school choice moms”- that other Floridian Republicans did not win over. Gov. DeSantis has expanded school choice programs, expanded virtual learning for all students in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, and is making learning and choice central to his administration’s focus.
The House and Senate are both Republican-controlled. Both chambers are pro-reform and typically pass legislation that improves on options for Florida’s students. In the 2019 legislative session both houses passed legislation that invested hundreds of millions of dollars into scholarships for kids with disabilities to have better access to schools of their choice. The General Assembly has also created the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program which will help 18,000 students attend their ideal school – and shrink the waitlist of the state’s already existing Tax Credit Scholarship Program.
Florida’s Blaine Amendment has been interpreted as prohibitive of using public funds for private schools and has been used twice to strike down an Opportunity Scholarship Program.
https://ij.org/report/school-choice-and-state-constitutions/florida/
School and district report cards are easy to access from Florida’s DOE homepage under the Accountability subheading. School report cards contain one summative grade at the top, making it clear to parents. Reports are useful and complete, including data on performance, attendance, graduation, per-pupil expenditure, and more. Users can search by zip code to compare nearest schools, which is a great added feature for parents.
Educational options are also extremely easy to locate under the Feature Topics subheading by clicking School Choice, where you can access information on K-12 scholarship programs and charter schools.
School board elections are during the general election cycle, which gives parents more power in their decision making because of higher voter turnout.