Florida's Schools of Despair
State-funded charter school boondoggle costs taxpayers millions
Florida lawmakers seem hellbent on tearing down public schools in the state.
In addition to the state’s problematic school voucher scheme, a charter school program called “Schools of Hope” is bleeding hundreds of millions of dollars from the state budget.
An OpEd in the Bradenton Times submitted by the League of Women Voters explains:
On the last day of Florida’s 2025 legislative session, lawmakers quietly changed a program called “Schools of Hope.” These changes will move millions more of your tax dollars away from public schools and into charter schools. Many of these charter schools hire for-profit companies to run them, which means your tax money can become private profits.
The schools are expensive - and don’t seem to make a dent in student achievement:
In 2017, Florda created the “Schools of Hope” program to help students in low-performing schools (Fla. Stat. §1002.333, 2017). The plan was to bring in good charter school operators who would open schools near failing public schools. This would give struggling students better options.
Eight years later, Florida has spent over $300 million on this program. (Oxenden, 2025) But it hasn’t worked well. Many Hope schools do no better than the regular public schools they were supposed to replace. (Florida Department of Education, 2025; Orlando Sentinel, 2025)
There are only about a dozen Schools of Hope in Florida. In 2024, eight of them got C or D grades. (Orlando Sentinel, 2025)
Florida has perhaps the widest variety of school choice “choices” in the country - and yet, academic achievement (as measured by NAEP test scores) is not showing signs of improvement.
In 2007, Florida’s 8th-grade math score on NAEP was 277. In 2024, it was 267. It has taken ups and downs over that time period.
8th-grade reading: 260 in 2007, 253 in 2024.
4th-grade math went from 242 to 243 from 2007 to 2024.
4th-grade reading 224 to 218.
NAEP scores vary based on a number of factors -but, it seems clear that having the Wild West of school choice has not had the desired effect of improving overall academic achievement.
Now, Florida is going even more “all-in” on school choice - spending millions more in tax dollars despite a lack of results.
Being a student,I would say that “education is the most powerful weapon in this world” as said by NELSON MANDELA but in today's life,it lays stress on students.
In today's life, education doesn't matter means it doesn't matter for anyone that a student has knowledge but the basic thing which matters is marks.
A student is known by his/her own marks.
Due to this,all students do their best to achieve above 90% and this is the only reason why students are scoring full marks.
Education is best,but people made it worse.
The main thing should be whether a man has a knowledge or not and not the marks.
Education should be treated as a knowledge
This should be a motto for everyone:
Education means having knowledge and not marks.