Enrollment in Florida’s public schools is declining, but experts are divided on how much of the blame is on the state’s school choice program.
Several districts in the state have closed schools as attendance drops and thousands of students flock to private schools or home-learning options.
Some experts see the change as a natural outcome of giving parents more educational choices, while others say a “lack of transparency” in Florida’s private school data hides a larger problem.
“As school choice increases substantially, we may see more people leaving public schools, which may force public schools and public school districts to change the way they operate, and I don’t think that would be surprising or surprising,” said Neil McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. “It may mean that some schools have to close.”
“This is not about choice, because choice in this case is about people choosing what they think is better for them, and ultimately that’s what we should want from our education system, is for people to have the education they think is best for their children and their families,” McCluskey added.
Florida’s public school declines are hitting some of the state’s largest counties, including Duval, Broward and Miami-Dade, with Broward County public school leaders considering closing 42 schools.
Florida last year expanded eligibility for school choice vouchers to all students, regardless of income, but it has long offered more school choice options than any other state.
According to state data, 68,000 students have transferred to charter schools since 2019. Private school enrollment increased by about 50,000 from the 2019-2020 school year to the 2022-2023 school year. And over the past five years, homeschooling has increased by 58.6 percent.
Only five other states have universal school choice programs and so far have not experienced public school closures on the scale of Florida’s, so it’s unclear whether those states will catch up soon.
Damaris Allen, executive director of Families Supporting Florida Public Schools, said the state has long struggled with underfunding its public schools, leading families to turn to other options.
“I think there are a number of factors, but one is definitely class size. I’ve heard from a lot of parents that one of the reasons they’re choosing to send their kids to private schools from traditional public schools is because of the small class sizes and because of the lack of funding, class sizes are getting even larger,” Allen said.
Large public school class sizes, combined with Florida’s teacher shortage, have led to the state having 5,294 teacher vacancies, the most in the nation, according to a 2022 report from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University.
She also addressed the state’s other controversial education initiatives, including book bans, lessons on race and the so-called “don’t say gay” law being pushed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Allen said state officials have “consistently prioritized private and charter schools and failed in their constitutional duty to ensure a quality public education system.”
Joshua Cohen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University, said that while “there’s no question that vouchers are expanding,” Florida’s “lack of transparency” in data about school choice options makes it difficult to pinpoint the true causes of public school enrollment declines. He said many of the students in choice programs have never attended public school in the first place.
“We know about it both from the number of kids using it and the money being spent, but we know almost nothing about those kids. Other than that, we know that the majority of them were already attending private schools,” Cohen said.
“We’re seeing a decline in academic achievement in many public school districts across the country, including those that don’t have voucher programs at all, and one of the reasons for that is kids are moving to other states. […] “Florida is a little more complicated because there’s population growth in some areas, but we don’t know that. And it’s not true that the increase in the voucher program is the only explanation,” he added.
The school choice movement has grown rapidly since the COVID-19 pandemic, with most programs only recently being implemented, so time will tell if it follows in Florida’s footsteps.
“I think Florida and Arizona have far more choice because they’ve had choice for decades and they have a very rich ecosystem of options and they’ve been able to offer options to families for a long time, so they’ve been able to develop that,” said Marty Luken, director of EdChoice’s Center for Financial Research and Education.
“It’s hard to say with any certainty what is causing the decline in public school enrollment,” he added.
