Florida's Wild West Voucher Scheme Loses Students, Runs $400 Million Over Budget
Will newly-voucherized states like Tennessee take note?
Florida is the school-choiciest state in the nation. There are tons of options outside of traditional public schools - from charter operators scamming tax dollars to build real estate empires to private school purveyors taking cash with little promise of offering anything of value.
A story in the Washington Post explains how school vouchers create challenges for the state budget, and offers a warning for states like Tennessee that are new to the universal school voucher landscape.
After Florida cleared the way in 2023 for any family in the state to get a taxpayer-funded school voucher regardless of income, students signed up in droves. Enrollment in the voucher program has almost doubled to half a million children.
But by the end of the 2024-25 school year, the program cost $398 million more than expected, according to a recently released report from Florida’s auditor general. And when students switched between public schools and voucher-funded programs, tax dollars did not move with them as lawmakers had promised.
On any given day, Florida’s education department did not know where 30,000 students were going to school and could not account for the $270 million in taxpayer funds it took to support them, according to the state Senate Appropriations Committee on Pre-K-12 Education.
A Warning
It shortchanged Florida’s public schools by $230 million, providing warning signs for similar programs.
“When we don’t have this fiscal accountability and transparency for these massive voucher programs that are ballooning every year, it’s a real problem,” said Qubilah Huddleston, the equitable school funding lead at EdTrust, a left-leaning think tank. “For the states that have recently universalized, like Texas and Tennessee and other states that could soon see vouchers as a result of the federal program, they need to view Florida as a cautionary tale of what happened.”
Less money for public schools. Little accountability for schools accepting vouchers. An inability to track students or the money that is supposed to follow them.
Oh, and the program is not doing much to boost student achievement.
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.