Q&A – School Choice – How Many Florida Families Are Using School Vouchers?

What we’ve seen is incredible growth and popularity of educational choice being placed in the hands of parents and students rather than being placed at the mercy of assigned schools based on where lines are drawn on a map.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Your questions, Brian's answers. It's time for Today's Q and
A of the day. This is the Brian Mud Show.
Today's Q and A school choice. How many Florida families
are using school vouchers? This is brought to you by
im'll listen to ashes check mark collections. Each day I
feature a listener question that is sent by one of
these methods. You may email me Brian Mud at iHeartMedia

(00:27):
dot com, hit me up on social at Brian Mud Radio.
You may also use the iHeartRadio talk back feature we
Love It. If you would show weesome love go into
the iHeartRadio app make us your number one preset and
then the Brian Mudshow podcast number two preset. That would
be awesome. While you're in there, look for a little
microphone button. See it, tapp it. You may lay down
a message right there, maybe a topic or question for

(00:50):
a future Q and A Today's That is this, Hi,
Brian school choice question for you? How many students are
now using school vouchers? Have we seen the numbers rise
over the couple of years since the implementation of universal choice? Okay,
so yeah, good questions. And as we are diving into
the new school year and school choice. Of course, I'm

(01:12):
our junior senator in the state of Florida, Ashley Moody.
She has proposed universal school choice betterally. She had this
to say about it.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
For those that value parental empowerment, the ability for all
kids to have options in education so that they can
fulfill their God given potential, this is such a critical
piece of legislation.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, really would be an amazing thing if the entire
country had school choice, as Governor Desanti said when he
signed the Education or Universal School Choice Bill into law
two years ago. Actually, ash, I guess it's been three Well, no,
it's been just over two years ago. Florida is number
one when it comes to education freedom and education choice,

(01:56):
and today's bill signing represents the largest expansion of education
choice in the history of these United States. And so, yeah,
time does fly, and it is hard to believe that
we're already entering year three of Florida's universal school choice program,
but we are. And before diving into the numbers and analysis,

(02:17):
this is a reminder about how the school choice program
is administered. A student is eligible for a voucher if
they are a resident of the state and eligible to
enroll in kindergarten through grade twelve. In the public school,
priority or first choice of schools given to a student
whose household income level does not exceed one hundred and

(02:40):
eighty five percent of the federal poverty level or who
is in foster care or out of home care. The
next level priority is offered to families earning up to
four hundred percent of the federal poverty level and scholarship amounts,
averaging eighty two hundred dollars per eligible student. Most recently now,

(03:01):
last year, which was year two of Florida's universal school
choice law, resulted in the largest year of school choice
expansion in Florida's history. Prior to the passage of universal
school choice yet about one hundred and fifty five thousand
students using school vouchers in Florida, and even that had
grown quite a bit. You go back in over the

(03:21):
previous decade, we were not at one hundred thousand. Entering
this school year, you have multiples of that number. So
these are the changes we've seen. If you go back
to the most recent pre universal choice year, the twenty
twenty two to twenty three school year, at one hundred
and fifty five thousand, students using vouchers year one of

(03:47):
Universal Choice that bounced to two hundred and twenty one thousand,
last year year two just over three hundred and sixty
two thousand, and right now we are estummated it to
be at the new school year four hundred and thirty thousand.
So when you take a look at this, we have
seen growth of two hundred and seventy seven percent and

(04:11):
the use of school vouchers with us essentially doubling between
year one of Universal Choice to where we are at
the onset of the year three, and what we've seen
just incredible growth and popularity of educational choice being placed
in the hands of parents and students rather than being
placed at the mercy of assigned schools based on where

(04:33):
lines are drawn on the map. And most importantly, as
school of choice has grown in Florida, educational outcomes have
continued to improve as well. Now Florida's K through twelve
graduation rate is at record hize. Florida's fourth and eighth
grade and APE scores are at record highs. Florida has
been ranked by US News and World Report as the
top state or number two for K through college education

(04:56):
for three straight years. And according to a study published
in the American Economic Journal, it was found that the
benefits of Florida's expanded school choice program benefit everyone. You
don't even have to make use of the program to
benefit from it. So, quoting one of the authors of
the study, the positive competitive effects of the launch or

(05:20):
expansion of private school choice programs on system wide educational
outcomes is the most consistent finding in the entire field
of school choice research. Pretty powerful. What was found in
the research is that students using school choice options commonly
performed better. That has been long known, hence the expansion

(05:42):
to a universal school choice program, But as mentioned in
that quote, there's a system wide benefit to it. The
bottom line is that as schools lose enrollment to other
schools due to competition, guess what they do, They begin
to shape up as well. They performed better too, as
is summed up by the Reason Foundation, the more competition

(06:03):
public schools faced for students, the better they performed over
a fifteen year period, which is the time frame nearly
identical to the NAPE scores that were also used in
the foundation's study. So pretty compelling stuff there. What this
means is that all students are set to benefit from

(06:26):
the record amount of school choice being used in Florida,
not just the ones that are taking advantage of it,
And if school choice is driving and delivering better outcomes
in our state, and if there's close to three times
as much of it today as just over two years ago,
but there's reason to believe that this will be the
most successful school year in Florida's history yet